Sewing update!
My best friend is an excellent seamstress - she even made her daughter's wedding dress! She has offered to help me pin the pattern to the fabric, and then cut it out . . . and sew it!! In return, I will do housecleaning (at her house) while she sews.
Yes, I did talk to one of the nice ladies at my knitting class about pattern layout - it made sense while she was explaining it, but by the time I got home. . . LOL. . . not so much!
My friend said NOT to try cutting the fabric myself, before she has a chance to go over it with me - she said you only get ONE try to get it right.
She also had a suggestion about my old sewing machine. Don't know if I mentioned this, but I have two - one that my father gave me as a wedding gift more than forty years ago, and another one that a co-worker gave me about ten years ago.
My co-worker said that
she got it as a wedding gift, she hates to sew, so she never used it. When she got divorced, her ex-husband wanted it so, of course, she just
had to have it!!
Of course, after she got it in the settlement, she still didn't use it and asked me if I wanted it. I said "yes, please, thank you very much". I have had this second machine probably ten years, and have only used it once or twice. When I did use it, it seemed to work really well - much better than the one I got as a wedding gift (the one my Dad gave me was good when new, but I wore it out with various DIY sewing projects - DIY meaning nothing needing a pattern!).
Anyway, my friend knows this sewing machine wizard dude, and suggested that I bring in the machine that I like the best (the one I got from a co-worker) and have him change the oil on it and give it a "tune up", and give it a basic evaluation/look over. Well, I dug this thing out of the closet, and though it's got some years on it, it looks like it has hardly ever been used. I looked inside the compartment that holds the the gears for the needle up-and-down, and the compartment where the bobbin lives - both clean as a whistle - not a speck of dirt or thread dust, or anything in either place.
Turns out this might be a really good machine (it's a Kenmore) - it is all-metal (not like the new plastic ones) and can also do one or two fancy stitches (basic, but all that I need). I even found a YouTube video on this machine, same model number, exact same thing as my machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONLkRcqI-YI&t=78sSo, I'm going to take it to this guy and have him take a look. Maybe I can learn to like sewing!
Anne