Sewing Lesson

What's going on here? Something isn't right.

Somewhere out there I know there’s a more experienced sewer reading my blog who can school me on what I’m doing wrong… I’m teaching myself to sew. It’s a slow process to say the least. One of my first projects was to hem a skirt.  Not that hard right?  Wrong!  I can’t even get the sewing machine to work right.  Because I’m new to sewing I often do a test run before jumping into anything.  So I grabbed my scrap fabric and started sewing but…something isn’t right.  The bottom of the stitch is loose and bunched.  I thought maybe I didn’t have the tension adjusted correctly but after fooling around with it I wasn’t able to avoid the thread bunching. What am I doing wrong? Help, please.

Class

My grandmother was the definition of class. She was a lady when appropriate, sophisticated, and beyond her time in more ways than one.

She passed last October after living for more than a decade with Alzheimer’s.

Sunday, I brought her sewing machine home with me. When I picked it up, it still had a wound bobbin in it. Pink thread. I touched it lightly and wondered what she had sewn with it.

I love having her sewing machine because it is a piece of her. Sewing was something she enjoyed immensely, something she looked forward to, something that was all her own. She sewed my mother’s wedding dress–the same dress I wore more than two decades later at my wedding (though, admittedly, a bit altered).

Last night I started to organize her sewing box and teared up a little touching all the different colored threads.  So many blues and greens.

To have my grandmother’s sewing machine is very special to me. I’ll be reminded of her every time I use it and a little piece of her will always be with me. I think that’s pretty special.