With my foot on the pedal

The pedal of my sewing machine, that is.

Last Friday, I packed up my things and headed off to a class. A sewing class! One of my swimming friends had completed this class earlier this year and spoke so highly of it, I thought I would take her recommendation and book myself a place at the next opportunity. She - also a teacher - was particularly impressed by the tutor and her organisation and encouragement which meant that I was not only keen to learn how to sew with stretch fabrics, but also had a professional curiosity. After all of these years of observing and supporting teachers, I never tire of seeing a true professional work their magic. (Sorry, it’s not magic at all, but outstanding professional skills of course.)

The class was to make a T shirt and required 2 metres of cotton jersey fabric. With quite a collection of Breton style tops in my wardrobe already, I chose a narrower stripe.

I noticed my error as soon as I started to lay out the fabric and cut out the pattern pieces. My eyes were immediately dazzled by those headache inducing stripes and trying to match the stripes up before cutting was almost impossible.

And the curl! Whilst buying the fabric, I hadn’t noticed this at all, for the edges had been treated with starch or something similar and whilst on the bolt, the fabric looked perfectly fine. But, before the class, I washed it as instructed and from that moment on, this dazzling, narrow striped fabric did nothing but curl up, especially where the seams were sewn. Hmmm.

Making one’s own T shirt means that small quirky details can be added, like colourful binding tape at the neckline. Invisible on the outside, that pop of colour is just a cheerful individual touch and gives a bit of personality. I’m not sure I stitched that as evenly as I might have done, but hey, this was a beginner’s work here and I allowed myself a bit of leeway.

The construction was “not too bad”, given those circumstances then. I was using my oldest sewing machine; the one that had been a 21st birthday present from my parents but which still runs smoothly with a perfect stitch. But it lacks the bells and whistles of my “sewing computer” and more precisely, the “stretch” or “lightning” stitch. So my seams were zigzagged and as soon as I spotted it, I sought advice. Lauren suggested a shorter, smaller stitch and an adjustment of the tension, both of which worked to some degree, but I thought that perhaps the best thing to do was to sew those seams again using the best machine for the job.

In spite of all these self-induced difficulties, I really enjoyed the class! Lauren was indeed a great teacher, with a calm approach and very reassuring manner. I enjoyed working with her and I’d love to take another of her classes, but perhaps next time, I will be better prepared and make some wiser choices. I brought home an “almost” finished, long sleeved T shirt which just needs the hem to be stitched, but I’m tempted to revisit some of those seams a redo them. I might even be really brave and sew them on my overlocker, to manage that curl too!

All weekend, whenever I went to my desk in our studio, I tripped over my still-packed box, which sat there looking at me with just enough of that stripy fabric to pique my conscience. I resisted unpacking it all because, I knew that on Monday, I’d be taking it all out again, for another sewing session.

This time, however, it wasn’t a class, but one of our Avening WI get togethers. We were not sewing curtains for the village hall this time, (Can you spot them in the photo?!) but making hospital property bags and smaller bags for syringe drivers. Our local hospital had put out a request for both of these - the property bags for people to take home their belongings, often when they arrived as an emergency and didn’t happen to have a suitcase with them at the time. The syringe driver bags are for people who are in need of constant delivery of medication and have a small machine to carry with them the whole time.

As always, there are some who come to sew, some come to cut fabric or bring their iron and board and others come to make tea and coffee! Some might just come for the chatter - because that’s always a great part of the fun too. We bring and share lunch - I always take a bowl of my brown rice salad - and in just a couple of hours, we can get quite a lot done.

We’d been collecting fabric over the last couple of weeks too and made just a small hole in the mountain we had to use, even though we sewed nearly forty bags!

I made four of the smaller syringe driver bags, of lighter fabric whilst others preferred sewing the larger, heavier bags, for which the accurate sizing wasn’t quite so important. Only as we were packing up to go home did we read the last sentence on one of the instruction sheets: “finally, add a label with “Handmade by…..”

What had we not done?

So this morning, I found a reel of twill tape and sat at my machine, pedal to the ground, sewing a reel of forty labels: “Made with love from Avening WI” ready for me to take to Helen at my book group tomorrow, so she can have the bags ready for collection on Friday.

One last thought before I put them in my bag saved her getting her sewing machine out, though. As I wound the tape onto the reel, I thought about sewing them all on - quite a task! So, I’ve added some iron-on adhesive to the back of the tape and hope that it will make the task a little easier.

And now, I suppose I had better put my sewing machine away.

Or should I finish the most expensive T shirt in my wardrobe first?