Welcome to my bobbincat sewing blog! I am returning to home sewing after a 10 year drought and have decided to document the journey and share with others who might be in the same position.
Hardly anyone I know sews these days so for support I have been trawling the internet and have found a whole active global sewing community offering extremely helpful advice. Pattern Review.com is amazing. You can see how others have done with sewing commercial patterns and you can see how the pattern looks on different body types. Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing has also provided great inspiration and free sewing lessons.
I have also discovered Colette patterns and I got a great little book out of the library by Simon Henry called The Little Black Dress which helps with drafting a pattern made to fit beautifully. I have decided to buy my own copy of this little book with its overview of sewing techniques and its explanation of using the block method.
The team at Fabric Vision has been fantastic. The materials have changed quite a lot in 10 years and I have a lot of catching up to do. For example; how to hem stretch knit fabric that is as slippery as an eel and how to use bias binding instead of facings.
When I was 11 years old my lovely mother gave me a basket of sewing items including some fantastically sharp singer sewing scissors which I still use today decades later. She also gave me a tape measure and pins, a quick unpick (which today is called a seam ripper and come to think of it I have been overly frustrated on several occasions and did actually rip the seam instead of the threads!) Patience is a virtue when it comes to sewing.
Anyway the basket of sewing items was just in time for me to start sewing class at 'Manual Training" and I made a skirt which I wore a lot since we didn't have school uniform. Then my mother bought me some more material and I made another skirt up at home to get more practice. From there I sewed all sorts of clothes from tops, to dresses to trousers and wore them all. I even made (actually it was more of a build) my own wedding dress out of taffeta. Thanks Mum for hand hemming the lace on the 5 metres of hem since I had run out of stem by then!
I have two boys, so in the early years I did lots of pyjamas, dressing gowns and dungarees as well as the full range of super hero costumes for them. They tend to be t-shirt kids so the sewing slowed down.
Anyway the sewing projects I am embarking on are for me. I have decided that I can make skirts for $20 rather than paying $180. Wish me luck.
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