Blissful Musings

This weekend I bought a sewing machine! What’s my past sewing experience? Well I’ve sewed a button and when I was 13 I vaguely remembering sewing a bag at some club. Basically what I’m trying to say is that sewing is completely foreign to me and I have no clue what I am doing.

So why did I buy a sewing machine? I had seen first hand from my MIL how useful such skills could be as she adjusted/embellished clothing, added details to curtains and helped me hem pants for my short legs. Still, I wasn’t very interested in learning to sew for whatever reason. Well in recent months I’ve been admiring the sewing abilities of these lovely ladies and started contemplating that maybe it could be fun. I saw more and more inspiring projects out in the blog world and got a little curious. I looked into taking a sewing class a month or 2 ago, but then found out I had to own a sewing machine. There was no way I was paying $500+ to try a new hobby and learn how to sew. I got over sewing fast.

Fast forward to this weekend. I have been itching to bust out my Yudu and screen-print some place-mats, pillows and other fun items to add some decor to our home. I also wanted to get back into my crafting that has been on hold for the most part since the wedding. As I went shopping for the perfect place-mats, pillows and other materials I was dismayed to find that they were all either too expensive or just not good material for screen printing.

We went to JoAnn’s to buy some cheap material that I could test print on, before printing on the actual supplies that would cost us money if I screwed up. (Which in past Yuduing experience, there will be one or two mess ups at first.) Once we were there we somehow ended up in the mini sewing machine shop within the store. DUN dun dun. After some debate over the pros and cons we decided we should seriously consider buying one of the machines. I’d be able to create all those things I wanted to craft, it would be useful and mostly I wanted to learn the skill. Well, we found an affordable machine and decided to go for it.

We ended up buying a basic Huskqvarna Viking that was $150. How was it that cheap? Well there was $100 sale and then you could get an additional $100 by turning in an old sewing machine. Obviously, we didn’t have an old sewing machine. But, we did buy a $14 hand sewing machine in the store and turned that in for the $100 credit. Yes, it was still in its box when we turned it in.  Awesome.

Funny fact? Mark actually can sew and knows how to operate a machine really well. He grew up as 1 of 3 brothers with a single mom. My MIL taught the boys to sew so that independently they could hem pants, fix buttons and do other basic things with the machine and by hand if needed. In fact when we were first dating and visiting my family, Mark successfully sewed my younger brother a Popeye costume for a school dance. Yep, he is one talented guy. With his sewing knowledge, Mark was able to figure out that it really was a good machine and that it included all the necessary things like feet, stitches and other stuff that I didn’t understand as I stood by and smiled while he talked with the salesperson.

So that my friends is how I ended up as the proud new owner of a sewing machine. Now I just have to learn how to sew. I already completed one project and will show you the results in another post along with some plans for future projects. In the meantime I’m planning on taking some classes and am scouring the internet for sewing blogs. I promise to be honest and show you all my projects even if they are total failures. Just don’t laugh at me too much.

Do you sew? Any advice, tips, inspiration or blogs you can send my way?

What’s a new skill you want to learn?