One of my earliest childhood memories is standing in an unfinished dress, fidgeting impatiently, while my mom pinned up the hem. I remember the excitement of choosing the fabric, a dark purple broadcloth, and the white daisy trim that went around the waist and along the bottom of the skirt. When my mom was sewing on her machine, I would stand on my tip-toes and watch the needle go up and down. The lines of stitches appearing in the fabric felt like magic. My first sewing machine came to me from Santa in 1976. It was pink and white plastic that stitched with a glue cartridge. But, soon after, under my mother´s watchful eye, I graduated to her Kenmore and began making blankets for my stuffed animals and stuffed holiday ornaments from a printed panel. By the time I was in middle school, I was making clothes for myself. I think I had every Brooke Shields pattern. Ahh, the 80s. My mother, ever thrifty, taught me how to lay pattern pieces to make the most of my fabric and taught me how to insert zippers correctly and neatly. She frequently had me rip out seams and re-do them to her exacting standards. I can remember being so frustrated and thinking “who cares?”, but I understand now the lessons she was trying to instill in me then: patience, perseverance and pride in a job well done.
More than three decades after receiving my pink plastic machine, I am surrounded by my sewing machine, my serger, spools of thread, boxes of notions, bins of fabric and shelves of books related to sewing. I am happy to say that my skills have evolved substantially since I made those lumpy, misshapen holiday ornaments so many years ago.
I am here to answer your sewing questions, so please feel free to email me or to ask questions in the forum. I hope you enjoy your time here at BellaOnline.
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