My partner used the time I spent at a children's birthday party (not getting bored for a change - we adults were allowed to participate in the ice skating activity!) to sort out the suits, and when we got home, I proudly looked at the sewing I had done over the holidays. And my face fell. It looked sloppy, lopsided and a mess. Of course I knew I had overlooked a few things. The fabric should have been washed first as it is prone to shrinkage. The gathered part should have been done with two threads at the same time, not the shoddy attempt I made to rescue the one-threaded bit afterwards. Silly, beginner's errors, which have now cost me some material. My local Hobbycraft have run out of the satin I used, so the whole pressure bubble burst in me frantically trying to find a dress I liked online. My partner then told me how silly I was (granted - he didn't see the first attempt) and I agreed to give sewing machines another try.
My mother-in-law's is lovely, but just not for beginners at all. It has lots of different settings, an option of one or two needles and the tension needs adjusting for each type of thread. When I first used it, I was just overwhelmed and had little idea what I was doing. It is a miracle I managed to thread the bobbins alright.
So off I went to purchase the one thing I had set my eyes on for the last few weeks: Hobbycraft's very own mini sewing machine. At £25, not only was the price attractive; the whole things also came pre-threaded, saving me the many minutes of cultural vocabulary enhancement (i.e. swearing) I spent fussing with the other machine.
Working the machine is intuitive, if you have ever seen a sewing machine before. There are two wheels and two buttons, One wheel you leave alone (it sorts out the thread tension and is already pre-set to its optimum setting), the other you use to sort out the needle height. One button switches the sewing machine on, the other one sets the speed to low or high. The one lever at the back ensures that the fabric can be inserted and held in place. That is it. As a sewing machine for beginners, this is brilliant. It does what it says on the packing - sew fabric together.
There are two downers. One is that the machine only works the most basic running stitch; there are no potions to change to any other type. Having said that, the machine costs £25 as opposed to £100 for most of the others, so I didn't expect miracles. The other downer is that the instructions still require some basic knowledge of how a sewing machine works. Other than the labelling, there were no diagrams to show how to thread the machine; the instructions only stated to look at the set-up closely before threading and the rest was text. Now, having threaded the other machine, I have a basic understanding, but I feel that diagrams would have helped there as this machine would most obviously be bought by beginners like me, or by people who just use it 'on the go'.
I will cut the patterns again and carry on!
P.S. Just in case you were wondering, I now have a full-time job, so typing posts will probably only happen once or twice a week.
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