More Crafting

Right after I finished my three-week "beginning" knitting class, I started a three-week "basic" sewing class at the technical college.  I've had a new sewing machine for a few years that I've never taken out of the box.  The last time I sewed was in 8th grade home economics when I made a duffle bag.  It turned out fine and my sewing experience was positive, but it's been more than 15 years since 8th grade sewing class and I was nervous I wouldn't know where to begin or remember how to sew.  I was hoping the class would serve as a refresher for my sewing skills and give me the confidence to take the machine out of the box and begin sewing.

In previous posts, I detailed how the beginning knitting class was not really as beginning as I thought it would be.  You can imagine my frustration when the same was true for the sewing class.  I showed up the first day and we started right in cutting out our pieces with a pattern and sewing the pieces together.  I thought we would begin by practicing sewing or reviewing the different stitches, etc.  I was so frustrated and this right on the heels of all the knitting frustration.  Ugh.

My skill level was again near the bottom of the class, but thankfully there were only 7 others in the class and the teacher was patient.  And the nice part was, the learning curve with sewing is much less than with knitting.  It's not that hard to run pieces of fabric through the machine.  For some reason, however, I got the machine that continued to have bobbin problems or tension problems or needles that came unthreaded.  Just my luck.

The first two classes we worked on a smock apron.  I learned how to piece the parts together, I made a pocket, did a blind stitch on the backside for the hem, and more.  Here's the finished product:

Then the last class we made a hobo bag.  This was more challenging then the apron.  We worked with interfacing to add a stiffness to the bag and a lining and pocket inside.  Here's the outside of the bag:

And the inside with the pockets:

I like both of the projects now that they are complete and in keeping with my goals for 2011, I guess I can say I learned to sew and knit; thus, achieving both of those goals already.  I'm working on the Bible verse goal all year and the other goals are a little more vague and less measurable, so you probably won't get updates from me on them.

As far as classes labelled as beginning or basic- I think I'm done taking them unless I'm looking for an intermediate class.

And the sewing machine- it's still in the box, but at least I have opened the box and read the instruction manual!