Craft Blog

The Learning Process

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 13:22

Posted in category Online Finds, Personal Crafts, Sewing, Tutorials

I’m trying to get up a Christmas tutorial post but I’m battling with the formatting, so that might have to wait till tomorrow I’m afraid.

Instead I’m going to give you something inspired by a recent post over at CraftStylish asking Where Do You Find Sewing Advice?

We all have go-to people or reference books to help us through those tricky sewing spots. Where do you turn when the sewing gets tough?

Do you have a favorite sewing book, website, magazine, or a friend that you call up when your stitching just isn’t right?

Learning to sew was a funny process for me. I grew up in a very crafty family of women, during my teenage years my mum ran a very successful business in Glastonbury (in the UK) making alternative wedding outfits (think LOTS of Arwen dresses!) and I completed a textiles GCSE.

We lived in my Mum’s workshop, surrounded by hundreds of metres of every single fabric you could think of, she had embroidery machines, industrial machines, overlockers, a fully stocked selection of fabric dyes, and about every kind of lace you could ever imagine. I didn’t touch a bit of it. I had no interest in what amazing talent my mum had, I would roll my eyes whenever she said that she was going on a fabric expedition, and the only reason I took textiles was because I knew I would pass easily with her help on the coursework, it also meant I wouldn’t have to take French because the timetable clashed. Win/win!

Instead of making the most of living with an expert seamstress it wasn’t until four years after I moved out of my Mum’s workshop and was living on the opposite side of the world that I actually developed any interest in crafts at all. Finding out I was pregnant with my first child seemed to click something inside me. Most women have an urge to nest and clean, I had an urge to make. It started off with crochet taught via youtube videos, and then at Christmas, two months before my son was born, my husband gave into my demands and bought me a sewing machine. The first thing I sewed on it was a Wee Bunny from WeeWonderfuls. Looking at the picture I was obvious not keen on the whole ironing this at this stage, but I was very proud. It’s still sitting unfinished in a box somewhere, it was stuffed at some point, but the stuffing ended up being pulled out to fill another project. The fabric I used in it was a FQ of blue checks and 50cm of blue homespun, the scraps of which both made their way into Declan’s Quilt last week!

That started the trend of using the internet as my inspiration and teaching tool. I am constantly amazed at the generosity of people who put up craft tutorials and patterns to help others learn.

The only actual “How To” book in my library is DK’s Complete Book Of Sewing. It’s been worth it’s weight in gold. It covers everything from making clothes and curtains to quilts and embroidery. I still refer to it now when something stumps me as a lot of the time it’s quicker than finding a tutorial online.

As for online sources for getting started, Threadbanger is an awesome place to start, About.com’s Sewing Section is actually pretty useful and BurdaStyle and the associated forums are great for clothes making advice.

As far as patterns and tutorials go, SewMamaSew is an amazing resource for links to tutorials, FreeNeedle has a huge collection of patterns all organised so you can easily find what you’re looking for, and my favourite book for starting points for so many projects is Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing – there’s a lot of very simple ideas that you can build on and make your own as your skillset grows.

For inspiration Flickr Groups are my main port of call, I also love using the communities on LiveJournal (in particular Sew_Hip and Quilting) and you can never go past blogs. I have hundreds of crafty blogs in my reader, I often let them build up and then take the time out one evening a week to have a cup of tea and just soak up all of the wonderful ideas that other crafters have. Inspiration is so important, without it I find myself stuck in a rut, but seeing what other people have to offer opens my eyes to so many ideas, different colour and fabric combos and different ways to solve a problem I may be having.

My best tip for learning is to get out there and get stuck into it all. You’ll make a few horrible projects and several mistakes, but in the process of this you’ll teach yourself new techniques and learn how to fix and avoid those mistakes in the future.

And if you’re living in a workshop surrounded by fabric, I’d advise you to take up sewing now instead of four years later