Me Vs. Ingrid (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the machine)

My love of all things crafting comes from my mom. Ever since I was a little girl, she has been creating. She made the most adorable homemade Halloween costumes for us (worn by myself, my sister, my brother, and then our cousins), crafted adorable holiday sweatshirts, embroidered all sorts of things, and has been in charge of decorating our church for the last 20 years. So I guess you could say that I come by my crafty side honestly. I mentioned to my mom that I was thinking of getting a sewing machine so I could expand my artistic universe. She told me that she would give me her sewing machine if I could figure out a way to get it from Chicago to California. Lucky for me, my in laws have a timeshare in Las Vegas and come out west a couple of times a year. Even luckier for me, they are wonderful people and drove from Peoria to Chicago with the sole purpose of picking up the sewing machine for me. In short, my family rocks.

Ain't she pretty?

So, it turned out that what I thought would be hard (getting a giant machine across the country) was actually pretty easy. Now I just have to learn to use the darn thing. I’ve been working steadily and I feel like the machine and I are starting to form a bond. I’ve started calling her Ingrid (she’s Swedish) and I think she likes it. However, our relationship has not been without its ups and downs.  Here’s how it’s gone so far.

Attempt #1

I’d had a particularly crappy week, so I decided that some sewing would fix me right up. Well, some sewing and a Korean beauty mask of zombie Hello Kitty. Okay, some sewing, zombie Hello Kitty mask and a gin and tonic. FINE. Some sewing, a zombie Hello Kitty mask, and several gin and tonics. Happy now?

In addition to getting my machine and supplies laid out, I also plugged in my old laptop to watch the DVD that came with the machine. Technology, amirite?! The first thing that the nice DVD lady said to do was wind the bobbin. Okay, cool. It didn’t look that hard (she said before actually attempting it). Several tries and several messy bobbins later I realised that I had been threading it wrong. The video did not provide a close up look at how to do it and I was doing things how they felt natural to me. That was my mistake. Why, you ask? Well, because I’m left handed. And, my friends, this is a right handed world. My husband insists that machines are not built with any particular hand in mind, but he is incorrect. He is also right handed so he will never know THE STRUGGLE.

I finally got the bobbin figured out thanks to an instructional video on YouTube. Seriously, what did we do before YouTube tutorials? Then it was time to move on to threading the sewing machine.This machine actually has an automatic threader, which is pretty cool. I know what you’re thinking: it was remarkably easy, I figured it out instantly, and all was right with the world. Ha. Of course not. You know me better than that. I’ll just let these text conversations with my mother speak for themselves (click to enlarge):

I tried to thread this thing for hours. I read the manual. I watched the nice DVD lady. I went to YouTube. I simply could not do it. I kept getting more and more frustrated. Finally, my husband came into the kitchen to see what I was doing and why I was making those awful noises. I told him of my plight. He shooed me out of my seat and sat down in front of the sewing machine. Looking at the manual, he took the thread in his hand...and threaded the machine in 3.5 seconds.

Apparently there’s a tiny hook that you need to catch the thread on in order for it to get through the eye of the needle.

See it there? Yeah, neither did I.

After my husband showed me how to thread the machine, it only took me another 47 tries to actually be able to do it myself. Cut to the end of attempt one, our heroine slightly worse for wear and feeling decidedly bested by the machine.

Attempt #2

The next time I approached Ingrid, it was with determination.

“Ingrid,” I told her, “we can’t go on like this. I want to use you. You want to be used. Let’s see if we can’t make this work.”

And with that, I turned on The Fellowship of the Ring and sat down at the kitchen table. And while Frodo and company started their long journey, I attempted to sew again. And I sewed through that whole damn three hour movie.

(Come on guys. You can look a little more impressed than that.)

To be fair, at least a quarter of that time was spent threading and unthreading the machine until I was sure I could do it by myself. Once I got the machine threaded I decided to sew some test fabric.  …..Aaand then this happened:

Look, no one said that crafting was going to be easy. However, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t curse a blue streak when that happened. Thankfully, my librarian brain took over and, rather than throwing everything out the window, I decided to research what I had done wrong. For what it’s worth, I was using the wrong fabric. I had a piece of knit/tshirt fabric that I had salvaged from an old dress.  I should have been using cotton. Sigh. Thank you, Martha Stewart, for helping me figure that out.

My next test attempt went much better.

Alas, after three hours my neck was cramping and my eyes were blurring. I needed to give it a rest. Lucky for me, I had signed up for a sewing class at Jo-Ann Fabrics And under the watchful eye of my teacher Alex, I was able to learn to sew hems, pivot stitches, and create this awesome drawstring bag.

So, when it comes to Ingrid and me, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And, surely, a lot more blog entries. You guys know I’m going to mess this up royally.