My Beginnings

  So, I love to sew.  Whether it's making my own clothing, something for my kids, or creating a quilt from whatever I can find in my stash, I usually have at least 5 or more projects on the go of varying levels of difficulty, just like I have 5 or more novels stashed around the house that I dive into whenever I get the chance.  Reading, writing, sewing, drawing, I have always been a creative person.  Deep down inside I have a driving need to create something every day, be it a pair of pants or a poem, perhaps both, if I can squeeze it into the schedule between children, caring for the household or training for another triathlon.

  Why not combine two passions and see what we get?  Time to write about my creations, write about process.  So here it is.  I did not go to fashion and design school.  I do not come from a family of seamstresses.  One of my great-grandmothers did quilt.  I am self taught.  When I was young, I believe 7 or 8, I got the idea to make a pair of pants from an old bed sheet.  (I grew up in a frugal farming family and my mom had probably never set foot in a fabric store.  It's not something that interests her.)  My sewing experience thus far was with a plastic needle, yarn and punched out cards of a butterfly among other simple images.  The idea being that you thread the needle along the outline of the butterfly one side of the card to the other.
   So as one can imagine the pants were a fail.  I won't say epic because I did somewhat get the slopers right from observation of my own pants.  My one inch spaced stitches didn't hold worth a darn.  (Sewing pun)  That wasn't enough to turn me off sewing.  I raided my mom's mending basket and moved on to dressing my barbie dolls.  Unfortunately for my mom, my fabric source was my own clothes.  (She wasn't too upset.  I used some of my older things.)  Barbie was well clad in dresses made from threadbare pink sweat pants.  From there I moved onto making a blanket for my newborn sister and to buying small swatches of fabric with my allowance money.  I made my first quilt from scraps I scrounged- corduroy, lycra, cotton, polyester and even some wool -old clothes and my great aunt gave me some fabric when we visited her on vacation.  Warp and weft were something I hadn't learned yet so the squares were cut from any angle I could fit them into.  It's definitely a crazy quilt.  It came out pretty square considering some pieces are on the bias and chalk full of memories.  When I look at it, I remember who supplied each piece and it make me smile.

   I convinced my dad that my mom really needed a sewing machine for Christmas one year.  (She honestly did!  Really…it's much faster to hem pants by machine than by hand.  My dad has short legs and all his pant legs need to be adjusted.  Ok, I admit there was some self interest.)  Up to that point everything I made had been stitched by hand, so I couldn't wait for her to open her gift.  The sewing machine took my projects to another level, by high school I began to sew clothing for myself.

   My first sewing machine of my very own came as a wedding gift from my bridal party.  15 years later, I still use it today.  (It's well worth getting a good machine.)  Before I had children, I made most of my own clothes.  My children are finally getting old enough that I can get back to creating on a regular basis.  I did make a few things when they were small, but our second child has health issues and when he was a baby there just wasn't much time.  So when it felt like I was choosing between time with my kiddos and sewing something cool, the sewing machine got set aside.

  I am back to making all sorts of items for my family, from quilts to clothes and purses.  It's been a penchant for the perfect fitting pants lately, for myself and my daughter.  I finally adapted a pattern I am  happy with.
 
  There's so much you can do with just one machine, but there's so much more you can do when you add a serger.  Bring on the parade of knits.  Then came the embroidery machine and software to make my own embroidery patterns opening a whole other world, from embroidering my husband's business logo onto his shirts and the hats I have made for him to taking my drawings and turning them into patterns for baby quilts.