Dedicated to ARTMIND, or... An example of sewing from one who cannot sew, but really doesn't think it should stop her anyway.

I have a great friend, Artmind, on Etsy who works with clay and makes the most amazing, modern sculptures. She has just written a blog piece about finally purchasing a sewing maching and was describing how she needs to learn how to use it. Despite this, she has been able to make the most adorable stuffed doll.


I for one have never let my lack of knowledge of how to use power tools actually stop me from using them. And I've got the marks and scars to prove it.


Having said this, I would like to show what my sewing endavours produced yesterday.


Here is my sewing machine, a 1950's Bernia that my husband purchased for me a couple of years ago. As alluded to, I had never actually used a sewing machine before, and the instructions were written in Swedish and Finnish, not Norwegian. And it was 1950's Swedish and Finnish... which did not make things much easier. Luckily the manual had excellent pictures.



I don't actually make clothes, although I would really like to one day. And when I say make clothes, I mean actually make them. I can see myself finding all sorts of pieces of fabric and sewing them together and then figuring out afterwards if I should climb into the garment, or put it over my shoulders.


But that's a blog post for another time.


This is what I ususally use my sewing machine for - to repair my son's clothes.

My son, despite the fact he's getting old enough to not ruin his clothes, still wears holes through his pants which require repair every few weeks or so. I could get mad at him. I could scold him and tell him not to have fun and to grow up, but I figure that before I know it he'll be out of the house on his own and I really don't want to be left behind with a bunch of perfect pants hanging in the closet.

In any case, my son does not actually mind having patches on his jeans. I find this amazing because he is the only boy at school that has this. I do not know if there is any other mother in my neighborhood who can sew, or perhaps most are just not willing to bother with it. Regardless, I certainly am not willing to purchase new pants every second week.

Having been through this procedure a few times already, my son suddenly said that he wanted to pick the color of thread. This was okay by me. So yesterday he decided on red and blue.

Now the thing about not knowing how to sew is that I really don't know what to do when it comes to specific problems. Like how to sew patches on jeans that have very, very, incredibly narrow legs. I got the one leg sewed quite fine, but for the second leg the patch shifted despite the fact I had it pinned down. So suddenly there was way too much material on the fourth side of the patch to be sewn.

I had already spent over half an hour sewing and while I love my son dearly, I'm not about to start ripping out thread for jeans he's going to outgrow in another month or so.

And as I see it, every mistake I make is a potential piece of artwork in the making.

So with my ingenious intellect (or my ability to slide over to the side of laziness) I cut the patch in half, folded the material over itself and then sewed up the edges nice and clean.

My son thought it was the coolest thing he had ever seen and can't wait to wear these pants to school on Monday. He wanted to know how I 'got the patch to do that'. 'Ah, my son,' I said, 'A mother can't give away all her secrets.