Sewing Classes

So after waiting and waiting I finally got in a sewing class at Hancock Fabrics. Me and a friend are taking the class together on Thursday nights. We ordered our sewing machines off of Amazon.com not having a clue how to use them. So the first class was two weeks ago and we picked out our patterns and materials. We are making pants, but I wanted to do something really soft like pajama pants. I thought it would be fun to do a Christmas pattern since our class would end right before November - just in time to bring out Christmas decorations. We found this bright green pattern with adorable Santa's in bright red suites with bright turquoise candy in between. I will post pictures soon! I am going to get a bright turquoise satin ribbon to use as the tie and I am going to get some turquoise fabric to add a cuff on the bottom of the pants! They are going to be the most fancy Christmas PJ's ever!

So I go to pay for the fabric and it was $22!! I was like - we could have bought some for that amount! Now I know why these boutiques charge so much for their stuff - because fabric is expensive if you don't buy it on a big sale. We even had a 30% discount and it was still $22 for 2 yards of fabric. Then we got homework! I had no idea these classes were going to be work outside of the two hours I went each week. So like a good student I waited until the night before to start on it...I mean how hard could it be to cut out a fabric and pin it? Okay - well it isn't as easy as I thought it would be especially when your fabric shrinks 4 inches on the right side causing the pattern not to fit. All my dreams of making fun dresses and nic-naks came crashing down as I stared at the 20+ pictures, steps from 1 - 45 that made no sense, and everything was coded with lines, dots, dashes, arrows, shaded areas, triangles, squares, circles... Sweat started beading on my forehead as I looked at the clock - it was already 10 PM and I had only cut out the pattern - I had been staring at the directions for over an hour trying to figure out what to do. So I finally lay it all out according to picture C and although the fabric was too short I pinned it on to show that I put forth the effort. Well the next day in class it wasn't just me who had issues - we all had to restart over. Then we practiced on our machine - making the bobbin, threading it, and THEN we made our first stitch...and all my crushed dreams came back to life!