I’ve been doing a lot of sewing in the past year. Have temporarily retired my painting for now, as doing commissions has become quite stressful, and painting no longer holds the same joy it used to.
A beautiful friend and colleague at work introduced me to the idea of sewing some simple clothes for myself. I’d taken a sewing class before but found it difficult and fiddly. At the time, I simply thought, why bother, clothes can be bought so cheaply literally everywhere. All the measuring, cutting, ironing really wasn’t appealing at the time.
However, in recent years, I have come to see it in a different light. I no longer wish to blend in with the crowd like I used to. I know what style I like, what I feel comfortable wearing, and the image I choose to present to the public. I care much less about what others think about me. Plus, there are so many types of beautiful fabric out there!
I tell you all a secret (not really!). Spotlight is one of my favourite stores. It’s basically a warehouse of haberdashery. if I go in, I invariably come out over a hundred dollars poorer. But, I get to look at and touch all the beautiful fabrics out there and admire the rainbow spools of thread. It doesn’t have a huge range of stuff, but it’s probably the most accessible to casual seamstresses like me.
With the encouragement of my friend, I started off with a simple wrap skirt. It was OK, totally wearable, but I learnt a few things along the way. She’d kindly lent me her overlocker to finish off the raw edges. I don’t really like using those ready patterns you can buy from Spotlight. They come in tissue paper and are so fragile, not really up to repeated use. If I like a pattern, I want to make multiple copies of the same item, but in different fabrics!
About this time, I started to get interested in clothing which is based on Asian traditional costumes, such as hanfu, kimono and hanbok. Those patterns aren’t easily available in Australia commercially, so I looked through Etsy and found some that looked achievable. I’d been hoarding this lovely green fabric for months, so this was the perfect time to use it for a cute little kimono wrap top. It turned out great, and a quilting walking foot solved all my “twisting” issues with the neck band. The original pattern had the right lapel overlapping the left, but after some research, I discovered that the proper Chinese/Japanese/Korean way was to have the left lapel overlap the right, so I switched the sides - luckily the pattern was easily adjusted.
It’s a lot of fun once I realised that there is no rush to finish anything. Now my sewing area is set up so I can easily hop between my sewing machine, my serger and the ironing board.
