My sewing machine was originally given to my mother-in-law as a wedding gift just after WWII, so as you can imagine it is very basic. I am not a great seamstress as no one ever taught me. But much of it is common sense. I've made clothes for my son, my niece, and myself using the same patterns multiple times. For me they have to be very simple patterns, but there are plenty of those. I almost always have used hugely discounted fabrics, otherwise it is hard nowadays to save money.
I've made pillow covers for the living room, curtains, a mosquito tent for our boat, cushions for the lawn furniture, napkins from table cloths that have seen better days, kitchen hot pads from old fleece clothes, and even diapers from white linen table cloths! One of the more frequent uses was to put patches on the knees of jeans, and even of sweat pants when my child was little and seemed to wear through them by about the third wearing. If you are short like me, a machine can make it quick to hem up jeans or a skirt. A nicer machine than mine can even hem very fine fabrics and come out looking nice.
I wouldn't say I've used my machine a whole lot, but I am so glad to have it. I really wish it could at least do a zig-zag stitch, though, as that really would expand its usefulness.
Glad to see RedThunderbird mention men sewing. My husband knows how to hand sew. In fact he just finished sewing a weather rip in the bimini shade of the boat and will top that with a patch as well. He said they taught basic sewing in Boy Scouts as it is considered necessary for taking care of your tents and canvass stuff. He will never sew a pocket with a hole in it for some reason, though. I always do that for him or it doesn't get done at all...I taught my son to use the sewing machine because I think it is a very practical skill to have and everyone should have the competence to do some basic sewing as needed. He learned by sewing a 16 long curtains for his own bedroom windows, three big ones. They were just simple rectangles to be hung on clips, but by gosh he got the job done and it looked just fine using $1/yard Walmart fabric. This saved a lot of money compared to buying the curtains off the rack. (Custom made was just not a consideration for us.) After all that he really knew how to sew a straight line.
|