Friday 11 April 2014

Welcome...and lets get started

Thanks for looking at my blog.

I have started this to track my various crafting activities, and hopefully help others to find good suppliers, new challenges, or just to share the mistakes I make along the way.

I have never sewn before, but having recently got a Brother JK1700 as a wedding present, I am excisted to get started.

Sewing seems a bit daunting to start with, and all the material I could find in John Lewis or HobbyCraft seemed too expensive to make mistakes with. I did purchase a meter of a reduced funky fabric which I used to make a draught excluder and a bottle warmer for red wine, but then the machine went away and nothing has happened since.

I have spent a lot of time researching the techniques involved in sewing, finding out about different ways to finish seams (who knew there was more than one!), and looking at all the wonderful things I can make.  A fantastic resource for informaiton and guidance is www.thesewingforum.co.uk which is a really friendly forum who answer even the daftest questions without making you feel silly.

I kept an eye on a number of websites, and managed to purchase a number of patterns from Minerva Crafts when they were on half price offer.  This gave me something to work from, and I started looking for fabric to use.

As we live on a very tight budget, I knew I couldn't really spend over £3.99 a meter, and was starting to doubt that I would be able to find anything in that price range.  Admitedly, in general you will only find polycotton at that price, as cotton prices have increased dramatically in the last few years.  However, I did find a few places on Facebook that did great offers, Greens Fabrics and Penine Fabrics.

I have also been introduced to the idea of using waste material to either make trial runs of an item to ensure it fits correctly, or to make an actual garment, and then dye the material to suit your needs.  When we helped a friend move house recently, I noticed she was leaving some curtains, which she let us have, and now they are freshly washed and waiting to be transformed.  One thing to note if you are planning to dye your creation is that polyester thread will quite often not take normal dye, so you may be best to use cotton.

Anyway, I now plan to make my first skirt from the curtain linings, and will try to post a step by step account of this.  The pattern is Burda 7042, and I think it looks fantastic, and not too difficult I hope.

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