Friday we all went out and bought stuff to make costumes for the Bean’s space themed party. The day seemed to evaporate around that – I had to walk down to the fabric shop for some extra bits, and I sauntered 🙂 And on the way back Tim’s sister in law was in her front garden, so I stopped off for a quick chat which lasted an hour.
Don’t know what the children did while I was out, you’d have to ask them or Tim.
And during the evening, I got to grips with the new sewing machine. We went for a Singer 1507 in the end.
Now, I’ve been using sewing machines on and off since I was 11. My school thought that domestic science was a requisite for even career women (we were all supposed to go on to be career women, there was a lot of ambition on our behalf at that point), and included a double period every week. The first half of the year was cooking, then sewing. Anyone who has seen me in the kitchen knows that the cooking lessons were not a great success.
Neither were the sewing lessons. I assumed this meant that I was incapable, and although last year I actually taught sewing using sewing machines, I’ve never viewed it as an integral part of my skillset.
One evening (and then the following morning) with my new Singer has completely changed my outlook. I’ve always known that having the right tools for the job can utterly change your capability at the job, and that knowledge lies behind the selection of many of the items I use with the children. But I’ve rarely had it brought home to me more drastically than in this experience. I now have a sewing machine which responds to the pressure I put on the foot pedal, can just sew in a straight line if that’s what I want, is capable of sewing around corners if that’s what I feel like, and is a dream to thread.
I’m sold.
And Small will get his teddy bear 🙂
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