Craft binge!

I hate shopping. I hate waiting in line, I hate trying things on, I hate the mindless materialism of the mall, and I hate the salesgirls who pronounce "thank you" as "theeenk yeea" presumably taking on some sort of sorority girl accent. So I taught myself how to sew over the past few weeks. Its definitely easier than shopping (especially in terms of total time spent), and it's very satisfying to make things from scratch. I bought a sewing machine, and mostly relied on internet tutorials for explanations on how to thread a sewing machine, how to make a pattern, how to hem, etc. There are lots of great tutorials with pictures on sites like instructables, craftster, and craftzine.

Here's some stuff I made.

Lined messenger bag. This was the first thing I made with the sewing machine, and by far the hardest thing I've made, because of all the pieces you have to cut out to make the box shape of the outer bag, inner liner, and batting. Also I added magnet clasps which needed to be hand-sewed. The whole process took about 4 hours. But it was worth it, it's a great bag. I wouldn't recommend anyone just starting out making this first though.

A camera case and a wallet. These were both pretty easy, about an hour each. I found patterns online and just followed the directions.










A grocery tote. This was pretty easy- about a half an hour to make. Learning how to square a bag was pretty key- cut down the time of making the bag box-shaped from an hour to about 15 minutes. It's lined and pretty sturdy, so I'm going to use it as a grocery bag. Down with plastic bags!







A shirt. I reverse-engineered my favorite shirt to get this pattern. It ended up being pretty easy- you just put an existing shirt flat on a table, trace it, then cut out two shirt pieces from new cloth. I didn't make separate sleeves, the sleeves bits are just part of the cut out shirt piece. I hear shirts are much harder with separate sleeves.







A skirt. I also reverse-engineered my favorite skirt to get this pattern. It's made from 4 pieces of cloth: skirt front, skirt back (which are the same), a wide piece for the waist (no zipper or button needed since the fabric is stretchy), and an optional border piece for the bottom. I added the border because it was easier than hemming the stretchy fabric. Turned out cute.






Overall, I've learned that:

• the amount of time to make something is directly proportional to the number of pieces that need to be cut out and sewn
• big fabric stores like Joanne typically stock mostly fabric that's in surprisingly poor taste, and some really nice stuff can be found in the bargain bins
• traditional patterns and the instruction set that comes with a sewing machine make no sense, stick to picture-heavy internet tutorials
• use stretchy materials for clothing- the fit is better and you don't have to be as precise with your pattern
• cheap-o sewing machines like my Brother 2125i work just fine, you don't need a fancy model with an LCD screen