SEW EXCITING

Occasionally I enter competitions online for the fun of it, never thinking I'll actually win. A couple of weeks ago I did this, I shared a post on facebook and emailed through my details just because. A few days later, on a busy day at work, I realised I'd had a missed call and a voice mail left, I'd won the competition! My prize was free attendance to a 'Master your sewing machine in a day' course held by the CAE. It turned out that another girl had won, but for some reason they had to pass on the prize to the next person, who was me! I remember seeing the name of the original winner announced and feeling bummed, but not surprised, so when I listened to the voice mail I was super excited, especially since the course was priced at just under $200!

The class was held only 2 days later, on a sunday, in the city. I had to cancel a few things in order to go, but it was definitely worth it. I lugged my sewing machine into the city on public transport, luckily the building was very close to the train station, and I set up for the day with 4 other sewing enthusiasts.

Our teacher was Aphro who was so nice and helpful. We all learnt some basic sewing techniques, but learnt how to complete them on our own machines. My machine, a wonderful Singer, which I received as a birthday gift last December from Jake, was the most basic machine there, but I love it so much! My Singer is super easy to use, it has some basic stitches but with some variety, and it has a button hole function which is important/awesome. Some of the other machines looked pretty cool with a lot of automated gadgets, but I don't need those, they seemed a bit complicated at times!

I had used my machine once or twice since unwrapping it, but never really knew what was going on when the threads bunched up or it wouldn't sew! After the day course I feel much more confident using it, and I now know a few little tricks and different ways to do things. Some of the techniques we learnt were how to sew on a zipper, sewing on lace, gathering, piping, different edging and some decorative work as well as lots of different stitches and their uses.

I have a few projects planned and will be sharing those once they are complete (and the recipients receive their gifts!). For now, here are some photos from the course at CAE.