Threading The Needle & Other Frustrations.

April is almost over & I didn't write anything about sewing. To be honest, April was a crazy month for me for both good & bad reasons. The good: I got a DREAM JOB working with an animal sitting company. Basically, I go to homes and play with/walk/feed people's pets while they're at work or on vacation. The bad: Don't worry about it. Just know it ended happier for me.

So, sewing. From here on out I am going to go through the motions that I did so not to overwhelm. First, the sewing machine that I own is the SY from Ikea. The reasons I decided on this one are simple. I don't know if this is going to be something I truly enjoy so I didn't want to put a lot of money into it at first & also I didn't want anything to technical. I want to learn from a simple machine & work my way up if I'd like.

Now, I should probably start by saying that the last time I used a sewing machine was when I was 13 in an Home Ec class. I made a gym bag & I cannot even tell you how it all happened. I don't recall one minute of it. I just remember that the bag was baby pink & baby blue because of course it was.

The nice thing about the SY is that it comes with a list of directions that are really easy to follow. Also, Ikea has videos on Youtube that show you how to, wind the bobbin, thread your needle, make different stitches, clean the machine, etc. This has helped my first steps immensely.

Winging the bobbin was the easiest. I am not going through those steps because it will bore you but again, you can watch it here. Installing the bobbin, however, caused me a lot of stress. I actually tried to do it, and left it for about a week because it was so frustrating. Eventually, with help from David, we realized my problem was that I took the whole apparatus a part and didn't lock it back in when really I just had to pop one little part out and replace. I always have to make things harder than they are. I watched the tutorial close to 50 times, frame by frame, until I realized my mistake. God help all of us, this is going to be all a long ass process.

I originally wanted to jump right in and start making an apron but my friend Charlie advised that I should start with something simpler, like a pillowcase. So, my next post (which will hopefully be up this weekend) will be on my triumph or failure of said pillowcase.

I had to remove Gaston 4 times before I was able to get this picture. 

 Hope ya'll are enjoying the spring! I know I am!
xoxo