As a typical movie plot line does, it includes the fun beginning moments and the excitement, and then goes headfirst into the downhill spiral that is the confrontation. The moments in the middle where hope seems lost and you aren’t quite sure how it will all turn out. In this case, the confrontation begins and ends with an evil antagonist known as the sewing machine, bent on the demise of our main character’s hopes, dreams, and patience.  

I am that girl. That was my sewing machine. And this is that story.

(Instructions on how I made the Utensil Holder are at the bottom of this post!)

About a month and a half before school began I told my mom that I wanted to have a useful skill like sewing. I mean what else did I have to do since I couldn’t go anywhere. She then told me we had a sewing machine. At which point I was completely baffled because that just didn’t seem like something we owned. But low and behold there it was in the back of the under the stairs pantry ready to be used.

 Now considering I had zero skill at using said machine I knew I needed to start off easy and not go overboard on a project I could not finish. (This does not mean I didn’t immediately make a Pinterest board filled with clothing patterns I could never recreate…) I decided the best way to go about this was to create something small and useful. 

The end goal? 

To sew a utensils case. 

I thought it shouldn’t be too hard, it’s like a rectangle that folds. It will be simple and then I will have a cute holder for things like my metal straws and forks that I can take on the go!

Boy was I wrong. 

As I stated in the intro, first came the fun beginning.  I went fabric shopping. I learned what a yard of fabric was. It is in fact NOT one of those whole fabric bundles. I got fancy fabric scissors and thread. I set up my workspace upstairs and Googled how to thread a bobbin. I watched all the youtube videos. I had practiced sewing a few stitches. I was ready. I was optimistic. I was enthused! 

And then it all went downhill from there as I reached the dreaded confrontation part of the story. 

(Warning: This part of the story may feature content that is dramatized. It is a movie plot after all. How could it exist without the main character being a bit too dramatic?)

The fabric was cut. The background music was playing. The needle was threading. My foot hits the pedal… and that is the exact moment everything goes wrong. 

I get exactly 2 stitches in before the machine stalls, the pedal won’t go down, and something smells burnt. I’m freaking out and yelling for my mom.

“I think I broke it! It sounds like it’s going to explode!”

The pedal doesn’t want to go down slowly, only full force. The machine makes a horrible sound, nothing is moving and I feel like the world is about to implode. I could hear sirens off in the distance… and then my mom told me she thought the bobbin was put in wrong, I Youtubed it, and got it all fixed.

Or so I thought. -But let’s skip ahead a bit with use of a montage-

Here you see me spending about 7 hours trying to sew the fabric closed. I go through MANY playlists of different genres. I break 5.

You read that right, FIVE needles.

The needles get caught into the machine approximately 1846497524836 times, requiring me to disconnect everything and re-thread the needle and bobbin that same amount of times. I have too many frustrating breakdowns involving tears, yelling, storming out of the room. I sew the top seam by hand and unplug the machine and go to bed. Leading us to the final few hours.

After a day filled with claiming a sewing machine is for sure my worst enemy I had a fitful sleep with nightmares of evil needles and came back the next day determined to win round two.

I tried a few more times, still resulting in the needle getting caught into the machine after 3 stitches, before noticing that the bobbin area of my machine is dumb and gets lose and was, as far as I could tell, the reason I was losing. After fixing that I was finally able the whole thing sewed. 

Totally about 12 hours of work for a project that probably should have taken 30 minutes.

And the final product looks like *drumroll*

THIS

Overall, for my very first attempt at using a sewing machine I think it came out incredibly cute! It functions perfectly. I hand sewed a ribbon to the back to tie it all together *ba dum tiss* I am now ready to move on to a new project once I get home from school! Maybe a floor length dress, or a two piece set! 

Just kidding. More like reusable cotton rounds for makeup removal.
Let me know if you want to see more sewing adventure posts and leave requests of what you want to see me try and make in the comments below!

Questions of the Day: 

Are you a skilled sewer? What have you made? Tell me all about it 🙂

Instructions:

• Cut 2 rectangles of your fabric 50 x 25 cm. (if you want to add a liner then cut two more of these out of your liner, but I just used the one fabric)
• Put the pieces together with the pretty side (whatever side you want to be on the outside) touching – so face to face
• Then sew around the fabric leaving one short side undone, this is important. I just sewed a small straight stitch.
• Turn it inside out from the side you left open
• Fold the open side so it looks like the others and iron all whole fabric flat
• Sew 1cm all the way around
• Fold up bottom about 10cm. Just make sure it is high enough that your utensils will fit comfortably
• Sew up the two sides to create the pouch
• Sketch out the pockets (I used chalk) I did 3 on one and 4 on the other but it just depends on how many you want for your utensils
• Sew the lines you’ve drawn to create the pockets
• Take a piece of ribbon of your choice and hand stitch it into the middle of the back so you can secure your case
  • And you officially have your own utensils case!

Bonus: 

• I created the napkins using a leftover rectangle of fabric by folding in the edges all the way around, ironing flat, and then sewing a zigzag stitch around it. 

Easy Peasy