My mother taught me to make clothes, and I remember at high school our first project was an apron for home economics class. The teacher was an elderly Hungarian lady, quite fierce about setting high standards of work - a little wiggle in a seam, and out with the seam unpicker! I'm rather more relaxed about standards nowadays (although rather more skillful, too) but it's still good to know how to do things properly even if I do choose to take shortcuts.
When I started working, the first purchase with my first pay was a sewing machine. It was a very basic Singer, but I felt grown up with my very own machine. It is long gone, the machine I have now is a Janome which now I think about it is probably approaching 10 years old. I haven't gone down the track of acquiring one of the fancy computerized machines, due both to the cost and to the suspicion that I wouldn't make full use of its abilities.
I sewed a lot when the girls were little, and were less critical. Little girls are very appreciative of any new clothes, they don't worry about fashion (unless they're Suri Cruse). Teenagers can be a bit iffy about the taint of home-madeness, even if they are the only ones who know. Also, I don't do jeans, they're way too much work, so for a while I just sewed for myself and some going out clothes for the daughters.
I think all sewers (that's such a bad word, I've seen some people use sewists instead) have a substantial stash of fabric, bits and pieces, patterns, unfinished garments, scraps and haberdashery, and I'm no exception. As well as making new stuff for Miri, based on her fashion "needs", I'll work my way through stuff I already have, especially the unfinished garments. Some of them were cut out years ago, I have changed shape since then, fashions have changed, so turning the cut out or partly constructed pieces into something wearable will be a challenge. Blogging will be my incentive to be productive.
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