Those who know me well, know that there is just not an end to my interest in all things crafty. Sometimes I jump from one thing to another, and that is why scrapbooking and card making became interesting to me. It was like making miniature art projects! Then when you throw in art journaling, mixed media, doodling, oh my – my head starts to spin with all the excitement of possibilities! This website will never become a sewing focused place, but I just want to give some love to all my fellow crafters who know how to rock out a sewing machine! Here’s why:
This month I am participating with over 400 other people in Lain Ehmann’s LayOutADay for February 2013. You can Scrap Happy and participate next time. During LOAD, she gives us a prompt each day, and everyone creates a page and uploads it to a private Flickr gallery. Obviously every prompt elicits an individual response from each person, so there are a multitude of layouts and stories!
My layout for today was from thoughts I had about being crafty from a young age. With so much talk these days about actually stitching on scrapbook pages and cards with a sewing machine, it reminded me of how much sewing I have done in the past.
My grandmother learned to sew on a Singer treadle machine which I still own. If you walked into the room when she was sewing, you could hear it practically singing, and it was going so fast you would think it was an electric machine! Even after she had an electric machine, she often would rather use the treadle, especially for quilting. It became hard to find the belts and she eventually just used an electric all the time.
My mother also knew how to sew and she made most of the things she and I wore. She wanted me to learn to sew, but instead of really trying to teach me herself, she had me join 4H and we learned some basic sewing skills. I think I made the obligatory apron. Hmmm…. I didn’t think it was all that hard!
By the time I started eighth grade, I was making all my clothes, except outer wear, sweaters, and jeans. I really enjoyed selecting my own fabric and patterns, and not wearing what my mom picked. Let’s just say we don’t really have the same taste!
Between my mom and grandmothers, they enjoyed sewing, quilting, embroidery, smocking, needlepoint, knitting, crochet…. It was no wonder I felt that these needle crafts were awesome!
After marrying and having three girls, I did a lot of sewing until three things happened:
- I had better luck being able to try something on and knowing if fit and looked good, and just buying it.
- The girls decided it wasn’t cool to wear “homemade” clothes. They wanted to shop at stores with trendy clothes. It would almost kill me to buy things for them made with such cheap fabric and poor workmanship.
- Family who couldn’t/wouldn’t sew wanted to take advantage of my skills, and have me do all kinds of alterations for them, or things I didn’t even like doing for myself.
The love of sewing was lost.
Lately, my oldest granddaughter has been so happy to have me mend some of her favorite pants, and I’ve seen so many beautiful quilts, stitching on paper projects, cute aprons, that I’m starting to get the itch to do some sewing again. I’m thinking I may start with a cute apron. I feel like I am coming full circle. Thank you grandmas, mom, and 4H!
In case you are interested, check out this Free Webinar coming up on 2/13, “Get Your Stitch On with Jennifer Larson” – Sewing on Scrapbook Pages.