Sewing teachers from Hell

I grew up in a family where everyone sewed. My grandmother sewed, my mum sewed, my sister sewed. I did not sew. I don't know why but it just never appealed to me... I loved making things but sewing clothes just looked so tedious... it took so long, as so much ironing and fiddliing and making it perfect- I also witnessed a lot of swearing and frustration around the machine ( sorry Mum but I did) .... . Plus the threading of the bobbin just confused me no end.

Fast forward to year 8 high school ( I was 13years old) and enter Miss Nash. Man was she cranky. She was old and mean and  always wore her hair in a bun nad her skirts were pulled up under her boobs.  She was one of those people who close their eyes for long periods when they are talking to you! I do not like that.  I remember we had to make a wrap- around skirt. The whole process was traumatising. She yelled and screamed and brandished that seam ripper in our faces- taking great pleasure in ripping open what you had just sewn if she deemed it " not straight enough" . She was so awful. She got really angry because I just couldn't thread the machine at all, I never got the bobbin to pick up the thread and I was too scared to ask for help. She actually said to me  " You really are terrible at sewing Cathy" . I use to sit in class and pretend to make my dumb wrap around skirt and then Mum would make little bits each weekend for me... ( thanks Mum)

Fast forward again to 2007 and I am on maternity leave having hand sewn a mobile for Busy out of felt and really wanting to make her some more things. Mum bought me a sewing machine for my first Mothers day and there it sat in the box for a few months. With Miss Nash ringing loudly in my ears, telling me I could never sew. One night when I was up breastfeeding Busy I thought to myself- I could just read the instructions!! This was a revelation to me as I am more of a press all the buttons , get angry , press more buttons, get angry and maybe maybe maybe find the instruction I have aften disgarded read one sentence , my mind wanders and then I go back to pressing more buttons. ( Lucky I married a methodical instruction reader, who reads instructions before he does anything??!!!- ) So the next day I got out some fabric and to my absolute delight discovered the bobbins actually thread themselves these days!!!!Why was there not a press release about this technological advance???

And that the internet really has quite a lot of useful information on it. And really you can teach yourself to sew from blog tutorials and craft books.

See this dress Busy is wearing! I made it! WITHOUT A PATTERN!! Can you hear me Miss Nash!!! I sewed it- on a  machine. I sewed it all by myself, I worked it out and I made it myself.

I made it from looking at Kates beautful skipping dresses that Busy has and from another dress she has... by looking at them and measuring and asking Mum how you do that bit... and it is far from perfect but it twirls and lots of people have said how beautiful it is.

It is the prototype and I am going to make another one. I am bizarrely proud of it as I have looked at those skipping dresses of Kates  really wondering "could I?" ( heaps of people have asked me if I made the skipping dresses it to which I have said 'No!- no way! I can't make things like that").

But now I have and now I can. So Busy is going to have a few of these for Summer I think.

Thanks Kate for your inspiration.

Thanks Mum for telling me of course I could make a dress like that!