Holiday Sewing Practice!

The holidays are a busy and stressful time, and I like to add to that by making christmas gifts. This year, I had some sort of “Move over, Martha!” moment and decided it would be fun to make my holiday cards.  Thing is, it’s an excellent opportunity for some serious precision sewing practice.  

Years ago, my mother told me that if I really wanted to learn to sew well, I’d go draw lines and squiggles on a sheet of paper and follow them on the machine.  I never did, because it sounded pretty boring.  It still does.  Somehow, though, if you add a stamp and some cardstock and a festive corner punch, I’m all in.  Here’s a fun, relatively easy, way to make some super-cool cards or gift tags and sneak in some sewing practice at the same time…

I’m actually terrified of sewing by machine with metallic threads, which is why I’m doing this.  I am also, oddly enough, just starting to learn to sew with a shoe on my right foot.  I’m normally a toe-sewer….

This will help you learn how to use the machine foot as a guide for sewing straight lines relative to an edge (crucial for topstitching), and will also let you practice controlling the speed of the machine and keeping it under control.  You’ll also get plenty of practice with making neat corners, which often involves walking the machine for a stitch or two I haven’t marked a sewing line. I’m lining the inside edge of the right toe of the foot up with the inside of the pinking.

You might wonder why any sane human being would want to do this.  I really couldn’t speak for them. I, however, have images of a stamped underskirt, trapunto-ed in gold, dancing through my head….  The kicker is, I want to do it for a 16″ doll, so I’m experimenting with how small a set of curves I can sew accurately, whether or not I can do it in gold, and just what level of time commitment I’d be looking at.  Also, I want to know if I will end up gouging my brain out to relieve the tedium if I try it….  ;)