My third and fourth makes for my Me Made May pledge are a sweater and a bag I’ll have to tell you about some other time. But I wanted to take a minute to talk about what I gained from this little exercise.
I pledged to make four things in May, and three of those wound up being sewn goods. It’s the only way four things are going to get made in one month, but also a deliberate choice. I’ve been saying for awhile now that I want to be more focused about sewing. After a lifetime of sewing sporadically and at a beginner level (I was at my most advanced as a sewer in junior high), I’m determined to sew more, to take more time with it, and to advance my skills. In other words, to act like I have with knitting these past few years. With these three projects (the skirt, the top and this bag) on the heels of the ten booth drape panels I sewed last month and the two Wiksten tanks before that, I’ve spent more time with my machine this spring than I have cumulatively in the 18ish years I’ve owned it. And it shows — in everything from my comfort level (way less cursing and fighting with the machine) to my craftsmanship. I’m getting somewhere.
But I still have a lot to learn, both skillwise and project managementwise. I can only work on a sewing project for a couple of hours before I grow weary and need to step away, but I don’t. All my life it’s been the case that I needed to power through something and finish it, at great discomfort and no matter what, because it might be a week or two before I could work on it again and I couldn’t leave everything on the kitchen table in the meantime. Now that I have a dedicated space for sewing, I can’t seem to break that mindset. Instead of walking away when I’m getting sloppy, I keep going … and things go south. So I need to learn the lesson of not trying to sew things in one sitting.
And I also obviously still have a ways to go before I’m as good at choosing materials and patterns as I am (or am getting to be) with knitting. Just like knitting, it’s a trial-and-error process, something that requires practice. So I will keep practicing. But as anyone who sews knows, it’s a little more brutal to get things wrong with sewing than with knitting — you don’t generally get the same kind of do-overs as knitters do.
So despite the fact that there are no new usable garments in my closet — the skirt and top having both come up short of wearable for me — I’m thrilled with my bag, my sweater and most of all the advances I’ve made. The growing feeling of confidence I have when starting a new sewing project is gold to me.