How did you learn to sew?

Hello, all!  Hope your day is good.  First thing is I want to say, "Thank You, Lord."  Yesterday I went to the oncologist and everything is good for another three months!  I am told I need to treat this form of cancer as a chronic disease since it has a such a high recurrence rate but it sure is nice hear, "Everything looks good!" from the doctor instead of, "We better do another scan just to make sure."  I really think I should glow in the dark.  Okay, enough whining there, Mary.  Bottom line is, everything is good!


Kellie, over at Craft Nurse Quilts, is having a giveaway because she reached 10 followers.  She is a sweetheart and I think she needs more followers.  Hop on over and check her out. She wants to know how people learned to sew.  I am kind of curious about that, too.  So, I am going to steal her idea.  I am going to have a giveaway myself.  Same rules as Kellie.  Post a response to this post for one chance to win.  Post a link back to your blog mentioning this giveaway AND telling your story of how you learned to sew in your post for a second chance.

UPDATED: This is one of my giveaways.  The other is a surprise but will be Christmas themed.

 This is a 24 strip jelly roll from Connecting Threads called Harvest Time.  It is prettier than the picture shows, I think.  I will also throw in a spool of CT thread for you to try.

If you have read my blog you know I love to "talk".  So, here is my story.  When I was a small child (preschool) I had a teddy bear that got pretty beat up.  I wasn't much on dolls but I loved Teddy.  I suspect Teddy was pretty cheap, thus all the holes he developed.  We moved a lot and based upon where we were living when I remember this I had to be 4 years old.  My mom got tired and of fixing Teddy and handed me a needle and a thread and told me to do it myself.

I sat down in this little rocker.

I took my little bear and started stitching.  That was the first of many repairs.  I could never figure out how to effectively tie off the thread and sometimes struggle with that today.  I still have Teddy.  He is very sad looking.

Several years ago I removed all of his stuffing and I thought all of my repairs.  My plan was to repair and re-stuff him and then dress him to hide his mange.  This morning I found this repair remained.

I suspect that is a later repair because the thread matches and I didn't care about that when I was little.  I liked the look of red and blue stitches on him.

Sewing on Teddy was probably not the best learning tool.  It taught me to hate hand work.  Hand is a four letter word, you know!  I think I was 7 or so when I had pestered Mom enough she let me use her machine.  The way this worked was I set down in front of it with fabric and she said, "Don't sew over your fingers."  She then took a glass of tea and went to the other room.  I would holler in and ask her stuff and she would holler back.  She did explain to me what the markings on patterns meant.

By the time I was 8 I was making doll clothes and some of my own clothes.  I remember I made the same doll dress probably 20 times or more out of Mom's scraps.  I made every variation of it.  It was a good learning tool because it had gathering and a lined bodice.  I got much better by the end!

I lived in a town where people were kind of judgmental.  My mother was divorced in the 70s and that was ugly.  I learned not to admit I or my mother had made my clothes.  When I was 12 my mom remarried and I switched schools to another small town.  Imagine my surprise when one of the cheerleaders said one day, "Mary, I have dress just like that one that my mom made.  Did your mom make that?"  I told her no but I had and to please not tell anyone. She was amazed and couldn't understand why.  When I explained it she started pointing out other people and telling me, "But their moms made theirs. If I could sew like you I would be telling everyone."  So, thanks to a cheerleader cheering me on I learned it was okay that I could sew.

I have sewn everything from doll clothes to wedding dresses, straight curtains to double ruffled pricillas with matching bed spreads and most things in between.  About 5 years ago I started quilting out of boredom.  I wasn't thrilled with the process but as I got into it I am enjoying it more and more.

When I bought my embroidery machine in 2004 I made my mom a wall hanging for her new house.  It was the first time she had had a sewing room.  She did it in pastels.  I tried to practice a lot of things on this wall hanging and I didn't know about a walking foot.  It is pretty bad but here it is.

It is amazing to me that I did great work on clothes but couldn't get that right.  Different skill sets.  I could do better now but I keep it as a reminder of all that I have learned.  I still try to avoid handwork at all costs and thus have learned how to do a ton of stuff CORRECTLY on my machines.  But I can finally admit I can do handwork.  I just don't like it!  I have done cross stitch, counted cross stitch, and most other embroidery.  I can crochet and do lace net darning.  Those are all different than sewing by hand.  At least for me!

How about you? How did you learn to sew?  What do you sew?  Do you do handwork?  Other needle work? The drawing will be announced on April 24.

Keep Stitchin'!

Mary