Sewing Lessons

DD 9 wanted to take sewing lessons at school. Lessons that I would have to pay for. I figured that's a little like a vegetable farmer buying salad fixings at the store. I sew! I have a sewing machine! I teach kids! So, we took the money, along with a friend who also wanted to learn to sew, to the store instead and bought material. I realized right then and there that maybe handing this job off to someone else wouldn't have been such a bad idea. I love DD and her friend, I really do. They are wonderful big dream sort of girls who don't let reality stand in their way. They were crushed when I had to explain that our first project was not going to be a nineteenth century ball gown with a hoop skirt or an extravagant silk pillow with four layers of fringe. How about a skirt? Elastic waist. We could even put lace around the bottom. Oh no, that's not enough - how about this one with three ruffles and ribbon around the edge? Fine.
The pillow compromise went more smoothly - one fabric for the back and one for the front with fringe on the side.

The good and the challenging is that they want to do everything themselves. They are mostly (but just barely) ready. So the cut isn't quite straight and the pins are a little crooked and the seam wobbles. If they're happy, I should be too!

Then there is the challenge of keeping them interested. If they had done the class, it would have been steady with an assigned time every week. Instead, we are subject to the whim of their emotions. A nice day? Lets stay at the playground longer. Sewing? Nah, lets play Barbies. Sewing now? Snack time.

So it's been going slowly, but we're making progress.

The purse from Heck

About two years ago, I fell in love with some fabric at the store - it was an elegant looking pinkish brownish upholstery sort of fabric that screamed it wanted to be a purse. And right nearby was the perfect pink lining. Conveniently, I found the perfect pattern on the rack next to the fabric. That was the end of the serendipity of this project!

It has been nothing but one problem after another. First of all, this pattern is way more complicated than it has to be. Of course I didn't realize that until I had all the pieces cut out! I bought all of the supplies I needed but then proceeded to lose them during the project and had to repurchase.

In the midst of all of this, I was renovating my studio and tossing out (sharing) unloved, unwanted projects that were never going to be completed - at least by me. So why didn't this one go? Pure pigheadedness on my part. I am determined, for some reason, to not be defeated by this one. I want this purse! I want this purse if it takes me five years to complete. It's not so much that I want the purse but that I want to finish it. It's like a mountain I want to climb - I don't even care about getting to the top any more - I just want to say I did it. It sits there taunting me, laughing at my sewing ineptitude. I also believe, perhaps somewhat irratioanally, that it is the key to finally getting my room organized. It's the one hold over project from the old room. I feel somehow if I can complete this project, everything else will fall into place. Silly? Maybe, maybe not. I guess I will just have to finish it and find out!