The story begins with a girl wanting to try her hand at learning a useful skill. As a typical movie plotline goes, it includes the fun beginning moments and excitement, and then goes headfirst into the downhill spiral that is the confrontation.

You know, the moments in the middle where hope seems lost and you aren’t quite sure how it will all turn out in the end.

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 Pouch are at the bottom of this post!)

Act One: The Intro.

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

Boy was I wrong. 

Act Two: 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, and set up my workspace upstairs and Googled how to thread a bobbin.

Plus I watched all the youtube videos. I had even 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?)

Act Three: It All Goes Wrong

The fabric was cut. The background music was playing. The needle was threaded. My foot hit the pedal… and that is the exact moment everything went 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 the 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, and storming out of the room. I resort to sewing the top seam by hand, unplug the machine, and go to bed. Leading us to the final few hours.

After a day filled with claiming a sewing machine was 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.

Act Three-point five: The Redemption

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 to get the whole thing sewed up. 

Act Four: The Reveal

With a total of about 12 hours of work for a project that probably should have taken 30 minutes… I finally had my utensil pouch.

But I am sure you want to see what the final product looks like

*drumroll*

As a final touch I hand sewed a ribbon to the back to tie it all together *ba dum tiss*

I then made a second one in under an hour because the machine worked WITH me instead of against me. Plus the second time I had a moment of “Wow I kind of like to sew.” (But I totally got the needle stuck at least 3 times during the process. If anyone knows what I am doing wrong to cause that please let me know!!!)

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.

Overall, for my very first attempt at using a sewing machine, I think it came out incredibly cute! It functions perfectly.

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!

End Credits Bonus Scene 

Napkins!

I made the little napkins using a leftover rectangle of fabric.

I folded in the edges all the way around before ironing it so it all laid flat. Then I sewed a zigzag stitch around it. Easy Peasy 

Mask Pouch!

Before I left for school I also made a pouch to carry extra masks in my bag so they don’t get all gross. Sadly I can’t tell you exactly how to make one because I winged it and it somehow came out this cute. All I know is I did almost the same thing as when making the utensil pouches except I folded it all in half, sewed up the edges and left it as one pocket.

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 the fabric flat
• Sew 1cm all the way around
• Fold up the 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!

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