My journey with the Adult Learning classes here in Newark continues, I’m currently attending the Machine Sewing for Beginners class for bags, and while I’m not a beginner with my sewing machine, I am new to bags. I also want to up my skill levels on putting in zips and buttonholes and as both of these are covered in the 6 week course, and knowing how good the courses I’ve been on so far have been, I signed myself up.
This is actually my third course - I started with the Gelli Plate Printing class and then quickly followed that with an Indian Block Printing and Stitch course, which was amazing and I’m hooked on printing onto fabric. I’ve not shared much of that yet, and none here though you may have seen some on my Instagram feed and stories, but I have so much to share from that one, so keep an eye out for that.
The bag making class is small - there’s just five of us and the tutor, and the skill level is mixed which is something I anticipated when I signed up. However there is still much to learn, especially as I’m using a machine provided by the course which is a newer model than mine and has a top loading bobbin which I’d not seen before, and it’s also nice to spend time with other people doing the same thing.
It’s also been hands-on too, some theory obviously, but not overly so. In fact the first week we all left having made a pincushion, so that was nice. As I wasn’t sure what it’d be like or what we would start with, I decided to take along fabric that wasn’t at the top of my favourites list, and that which I’d probably not rush to use.
And so that first week I made a Christmas pincushion, like you do!
I’d misjudged the seam allowance on the new-to-me machine and only realised once I’d turned the pincushion the right way through, which meant that hand sewing the closure was more tricky than it needed to be and therefore it wasn’t as neat as it could have been.
That annoyed me in a minor way, but later on I realised that I could pimp up my pin cushion and make it even more Christmassy by adding a simple red and white twine around the edge. The ‘twine’ I used is actually paper (but quite solid) which I’d saved from Christmas presents last year!
There was nothing wrong with it before, but I’m much happier with it now!
Next up it was a simple pouch, and for this we needed two pieces of material - outer material and lining - approximately the size of an A4 sheet of paper. While I had my B team material to choose from, I also had something else in mind. It was a bit smaller than needed but as this sort of pouch can be flexible on size I decided to go for it, and left with this completed pouch.
I’ve not made anything like this for a long time, and this was easier than I remembered. As the tutor said she’s a big fan of straight line sewing, and this is mostly that - and the purple popper sets it off nicely too, and complements the purple batik lining (which was firmly in my B team fabric list).
There was one part that I wasn’t entirely happy with (again) - if you look in the bottom left hand corner you can see the sewing is a bit wild where I started off and revved the machine a little too much and off it went! It was a shame it was on the plain background of the material, had it been on the other side in the pattern I don’t think I’d have noticed it quite so much.
But I wasn’t undoing it, this was a practice pouch and it still worked perfectly well.
Then I realised I had some ribbon that was very similar to the background colour, so I dug that out and added an embellishment in that corner, front and back.
Now it looks as if it was always meant to be there, and I’m much, much happier.
I also got to start another similar but different pouch - one that’s ideal for sunglasses, and as I didn’t have sunglasses case it was perfect for me. I choose A team material for the outside, and again B team material for the lining. There’s nothing wrong with the lining material, but I think a lot of what I’m calling my B team materials just look better in small doses!
The outer material reminds me of Portuguese tiles, and the lining of a man’s shirt from the 1970s!
And for a change this one hasn’t been pimped up, I finished it in the third week of the course just as the sun decided to make an appearance (at last!) - so I couldn’t have timed it better!