I have to say that so far my least favorite part about sewing is the cutting. I just don't seem to be able to really do that well. Of course I'm sure as with everything else, it's all about practice. On the first napkin, because I had trouble getting the sides straight, I ended up with an 18" square instead of the 19" square called for by the book. So to make the napkins match, I aimed for an 18" square this time. And I did succeed at that, but it did take a bit of time to do it. I think that I need a bigger cutting surface and also one that is a bit taller so I'm not so stooped down. But for now I'll have to deal with what I have.
So after getting my square, I sat down at my machine to finish the edges, using the zig zag stitch. Eek! The stitching looked just wrong right away! I immediately stopped and used my seam ripper to get rid of what I had just sewed. What was going on? I pulled out a piece of scrap fabric and tried again. Once more I had something that just wasn't right. I started playing around with my tension knob and it just still wasn't working right. I knew it was something about the tension, but I wasn't sure how to correct it. I checked to see that I had threaded the machine correctly. Yes, I had. I pulled out the bobbin (my machine has a drop-in bobbin) and put it back in. I tried sewing again and suddenly it started working like it was supposed to. I guess something had gone wrong with the bobbin and just pulling it out and putting it back it fixed it. Whew!
After stitched the edges, it was to the iron for folding and pressing. I folded down the corners and pressed them and then folded the edges. Last time I didn't use pins, but this time I used a couple on each side. I felt that it helped me to keep that edge straight. The biggest issue this time around was that I felt that I could have done a much better job getting the corners to be all nice and neat, so that will be my focus for napkin #3.
But I got everything pressed and then it was back to the machine to stitch down the hem. This time I really focused on keeping a straight line. And I started in the corner instead of along one side this time (last time I ended up not coming back to line up at the same point I started). I felt much happier with the stitching this time and although it may not have been perfectly straight, there are no obvious places on this one where I had to move the line of stitching over. And I matched up the end with the beginning rather nicely.
So although it's still not perfect, this napkin was much better than the first one. I think that's something good about this project. Although I definitely would like to move on to another project, doing four napkins really gives me a chance to perfect the things that don't quite go right with the first couple of napkins. So by that logic, the fourth one should be a breeze and look really great. At least here's hoping!
And now the more. Two things did happen over the trip: I really started to look at sewing blogs and also Pinterest and I got lots of scrap fabric.
First, Pinterest. Here's my Sewing Projects to Make board. As you can see, I have just a few projects on there. ;) I'm adding more and more as I see great blog posts with patterns/tutorials as well as what other people have been pinning themselves. And my board seems to be pretty popular as I've gotten several followers and lots of repins. That's quite exciting!
As for the scrap fabric, my MIL is a quilter and had two giant garbage bags full of scrap fabric. She let me and my SIL look through it and pick out anything we wanted. So we did and we both ended up with a good pile of fabric. I also got several of the bits of fabric that you sew and stuff to make toys. I figured that would be good practice for stitching as well as getting a useful item at the end. So I have a nice little stash of smaller pieces of fabric to use for things like the pacifier clips.
No comments:
Post a Comment