Last night, I SEWED. On a MACHINE.

The class was SO MUCH FUN! I had a blast picking my fabric – I could have spent hours and hundreds on dollars on cute fabric, but I will settle for learning first.

I was terrified to begin – when we powered on our machines, mine beeped at me (probably to imply that my mother is a prostitute). Apparently this was supposed to happen though, and Thea (our instructor) and Lili (Mistress of Thread) assured me I hadn’t broken anything. We walked through the parts of the machine, loaded up our bobbin with thread, and got the machine all ready to work. Before we started in on our bags, we practiced stitching on some scraps until we were comfortable, and then it was time to begin.

We laid out our fabric, pinned our patterns and began cutting. I was surprised at how many steps there were, but each step was easy to do and made sense in the end. To my utter surprise, the act of sewing via machine was not difficult – I had instinctively chosen the one machine in the shop that was a) different from the others, and b) idiot-friendly: instead of a speed dial, I had a slider that went from tortoise to hare. By the time the night was over, I was almost a quarter of the way to hare; such was my confidence in my new abilities. It was amazing! I bought a punch card for ten hours of machine time at Spool of Thread – I am itching to go back and practice some more. Tote bags for everyone!

I’m still a little bit afraid of sewing machines, though – it’s the act of bobbining and threading that scares me to no end. I’ll practice a few more times at the shop before I attempt to use my own machine, and then I’ll be off – I’m already starting to make modifications to the tote bag recipe in my head. So much fun!

So, how’d it turn out?

Friggin’ awesome.

My bag is made of mushrooms:

 

 

The bag is reversible, too:

 

 

And because I had to be different, I chose a third material for my straps:

 

 

It all came together nicely:

 

 

It looks great to AND fro:

 

 

Why did I choose hedgehogs, you ask?

The whole thing was so much fun. I want to take more classes, and I totally recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to sew – our instructor was great; walking us through every step and providing help any time we needed it. My bag looks amazing – if not for my slightly crooked strap seams, you’d never know it was made by a total idiot. I MADE A THING! HOORAY!