The Ugliest Thing I've Ever Made

So, I didn't think it was possible to do this after all the creative juices that have been flowin' but....I did it. I made something really ugly. Not that it's so un-normal for me to have made something that doesn't look that good but...this is ugly.

Last week I took a couple of classes at Joann's to learn how to use my sewing machine. It scares me. It scares me like driving down I-75 in Atlanta when I was 16. White-knuckled the whole time. I think I need to talk about this. I'm scared of sewing my finger. My anxiety always kicks up a notch or four when I'm around needles (ask my mother-in-law). I'm scared because I don't understand which way the fabric is supposed to flow right. I'm scared that I won't be able to fix the machine if something goes wrong---like I run out of thread on my bobbin (can I have a word point for that term?).

The teacher and the class were great. I felt more comfortable with the machine--really stupid but more comfortable after the week was over. The teacher was very patient with me. I think she saw me as her "special" student. But I ate up the extra attention, slow talking, and patient explanations.

I learned how to make a button hole, hem jeans, make a cuff for a men's pant leg out of wool material (mens, obviously. not womens). I sewed on "delicate" fabric--don't ask what it was called. I made a shirt collar but didn't know what it was until the teacher turned it over and traced it with her finger. And all of that was on the first day.

The second class was all about sewing appliques. I sat in my chair, leaned back, cleared my throat, and winked. "Excuse me ladies, but I hand sew my own designs on shirts. I think I'll know a little bit about how to get this done on a machine." Aren't machines supposed to make things easier? Okay, so maybe I just said all of that in my imagination. In actuality, I probably just stroked my machine so it would think we were friends.

First, we tried a certain stitch (the satin stitch?!) on a heart on a pink piece of fabric. (This isn't even the ugly one.) I placed my not-cut-out-so-pretty heart on my fabric straight. And it turned out like this:

a crooked pocket.

So then the teacher has us cut out another heart, iron it onto special paper, flip it inside out, sew it onto fabric with batting behind it, and then sew a decorative stitch around the whole heart. This is it. The ugliest thing I've ever made.


Now, let me explain. 1) I was using two different thread colors. 2) I managed to sew the iron-on paper to the wrong side of the fabric--hence why the fabric is backwards. 3) I couldn't coordinate the direction I wanted to go and the direction the machine wanted to go. And 4) Okay, I was cocky and it was a lot harder than it looked.

Talented, huh.

Other than this disaster, the rest of the class went well. I sewed a piece of lace onto linen cloth and cut away the linen strip so it looked like the lace was created with the linen. That looked really good. I'd post a picture of it but this entry is dedicated to the ugly things I made in class--and that I adore. Thanks, Ugly Stuff, for making me laugh!