Sew Cool!

More bad puns - but also part of a name of a book I saw today in Lincraft.

It is also what I think of my now finished practice dress!

3/4 view

The aim of the practice dress was to teach myself how to sew using bad material and an easy pattern, so I wouldn't be worrying about making mistakes and wasting money in true tightass fashion. This painfully slow exercise has taught me how to do the following:

1. Sew a zipper (badly)

2. Hem a skirt (I cheated)

3. Follow paper patterns

4. Sew pleats

5. Make darts - and randomly (stupid pattern didn't mark them down)

6. Change the foot of a sewing machine

7. Wind, fix and thread a bobbin

8. Make gathers

9. Understand the terms stay-stitch, baste and selvedge

I am sure there is some other random stuff that I battled with - and the end result is nothing near perfection - but then I must say I am pleased that it looks like a dress and I can totally see where I made mistakes and how to avoid them for the real thing.

Front view

Yes I cheated and made things up, but if you saw this 'easy' pattern I used, you would understand that sewing from these instructions with no prior experience is not an easy task. I would liken the confusion to chemistry class back in high school, where you get told to mix chemicals using a bunsen burner but then you have to figure out how to light the burner yourself without blowing up the classroom. You get to the end result usually after several unsuccessful attempts that involve personal pain (burning in chemistry, getting stabbed with pins in sewing), general mistakes (mixing wrong chemicals vs cutting/stitching wrong bits) and then making up for the mistakes (stealing more chemicals out of the lab/unpicking every stupid stitch you slaved over).

Sew yes, I think the result is sew sew cool - and I don't care if that sounds daggy :)