Learning How To Sew

For Valentine's Day I received a sewing machine (it was exactly what I asked for) and was thrilled to start using it.

I have never known how to sew anything besides a pin cushion I made in grade school. I can also hand stitch buttons on and small holes that happen in clothing. Actually sewing with a machine is something that I've wanted to learn for a long time because I have dreams of making more fabric Christmas ornaments with it and making myself some cute skirts that I see tons of people making online and wearing.

My thought was if these women can do then I can do it too!

Cue three months later and I still haven't made one finished thing. It's hard! I've learned that much. First of all, reading a pattern is like learning another language. Thank goodness my mom has been sewing since she was a kid because if not I'd have no clue how to read those sucks (and frankly I still don't really know). So once I picked out  pattern with the help of my mother, I then set out to pick out my fabric for my first skirt. That part was the easiest. Then I learned out to cut the pattern out to my size and pin it to the fabric. Ok that only took me a week (again with the help of my mother on Skype). Now I've successfully cut out the fabric on the pattern.

The other day I started practicing sewing in a straight line with some scraps and learning how to back stitch to start and close the lines. Later this week I'm going to finally bite the bullet and sit down with my cut out pattern and start sewing it together. I don't know why but it just terrifies me. I guess I just don't want to mess up the fabric and I understand I could always go buy more but I don't want to! I want to do it right the first time and have this great skirt to wear around. I'm sure my mom could have already made this skirt in an hour but it's hard to learn via Skype and youtube videos people. Speaking of which Youtube is a good thing! Haha!

 

I was also very happy to actually sew two pieces of my scrapes together and not cause a huge thread knot and to not get it stuck in the machine! Baby steps! Maybe I might actually get this skirt done to still wear in the summer.

Have you ever tried sewing? Any tips for me?