...now that I am well into my adult years, I can honestly say that sewing is an extremely underrated skill. As an adolescent, teen and young adult I was completely reluctant to accept this idea, after all, if I knew how to sew that would make me some kind of domesticated woman who could only cook and clean and mend her husband’s trousers, right? How wrong I was. Thanks to my amazing mother-in-law (who is amazing for so many reasons in addition to teaching me to sew) I learned this skill in my late 20s when we were decorating our first apartment in Los Angeles and I had decided to hand sew covers for two turquoise slipper chairs we had in our living room. I spent weeks sewing together the first one and it looked horrible, not to mention it would have fallen apart at the slightest tug. It was then that my MIL brought me her ancient, louder-than-a-lawn-mower sewing machine and taught me my first stitches. Much to my surprise I loved it, and five pillows, two blankets and a baby quilt later, she also bought me my own, a Brother XR-52 that I still use to this day. In fact, she gifted it to me on the day we told her and my father-in-law that they would be grandparents.
Since that time I have hemmed dozens of pants and skirts, and taught myself how to shorten jeans while leaving the original hem. I'm not creating a new wardrobe, and it’s not a huge cost savings, but I love feeling like I have the freedom and ability to alter what I need to and when.
Since moving in to our new home we were faced with the added challenge of finding and hanging window coverings in seven rooms and nine windows – quite a difference from the three windows we had in our condo. Again, my sewing skills made it possible to create custom lengths and widths in the varying rooms:
I've also found some great, simple online tutorials for little sewn goodies, like these birds from
Spool Sewing:
Now onto my new hobby...knitting!
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