#KirstyIsShitAtThings : Sewing

Hello! Welcome to the first official blog post of #KirstyIsShitAtThings where I, Kirsty, will be recording myself being shit at various things to show everyone that its okay to be bad at something new, and that practice will definitely make you better.

My first challenge was sewing. If you want the long and short of it, heres the little video:

I have sewn before, as I’m sure most of you have, in home economics class in secondary school. However, that was a very long time ago and so I was practically starting again. My confidence in my sewing skills were at zero - as I’m sure you can see from the first two clips of me panicking about even having to cut the fabric, and then discovering that I didn’t even have any needles. My confidence was so low that I couldn’t actually bring myself to do any sewing by myself before the class.

So my first day of actually sewing was at the class itself. Hosted by myself and Kat Stoddart, the class went really well! Everyone was so enthusiastic and they all left with an actual bag. It closed and everything! I was so delighted to have left the class with an actual bag, that I made. I made. Me. Who couldn’t sew two days earlier.

In fact, I was so enthused by the fact that I had sewn a bag together, that I thought I’d just keep going. I would of kept going even if I wasn’t doing this little blog segment. So since the class, I’ve made two cotton pads for removing make up and I’ve re-hemmed a dress.

The cotton pads were made from the same fabric I used to create the produce bag. It seemed a shame to throw the scraps away and so I up-cycled them too. Not only was it more environmentally friendly to not throw the scraps in the bin, but now I don’t need to use the single use cotton pads that come in the plastic wrap. The pads themselves were SO easy to make. I just needed some scrap fabric, something circular to trace, needle and thread. They only took twenty minutes or so and honestly, I found sewing something on a lazy Sunday was quite relaxing. As someone with anxiety, any activity that shuts my brain up for a minute, can stay.

After finding that I can indeed sew, I moved onto practical-life-skill sewing and re-hemmed a dress. If you watched the video, you will of seen that I probably accidentally bought a maternity dress (embarrassingly enough, not even the first time thats happened). But it was easily fixed! Just a quick stitch of where I actually needed the hem to be, and it was done.

So in summary; I’ve gone from not having the confidence to sew anything at all by myself, to re-hemming my dresses, and up-cycling fabric scraps in just 4 weeks. All it took was just one class to teach me the basics and I developed this practical (and surprisingly easy) life skill.

Is there something you’ve wanted to try but haven’t had the confidence to? Do it. I’ll make you feel so much better. Trust me.

Kirst

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