PREVIEW: How to Get Started Sewing – s02e01

As a kid, I attended a school called a lab school. It was designed to be a place where student teachers from the local university could practice teaching for a few weeks before entering into the real world as a full time educator. Our classes were small and many of us spent most of our school years together until we graduated from high school.

One of the privileges of attending the lab school was being exposed to experimental projects. Some of them worked really well. Others were just crazy experiments.

From the time we were very young, a teacher spent time each day teaching us Spanish - something that no other schools were doing. Although I never became fluent in Spanish, it was easy learning another language because we were exposed at such an early age.

I had mixed feelings about art. Our class donned big shirts and marched to the high school art room every week where we sat at huge tables and got our hands messy. It was creative and kind of fun, but I was a little worried about the messy hands. 😉

My favorite part of the week involved home economics and industrial arts. From fifth through eighth grades, the boys went to the shop room to learn about machines and wood while the girls learned about cooking, child care, and sewing. I didn’t care a thing about cooking and child care, but I loved sewing.

Our sewing room was outfitted with old Singer machines that worked most of the time as long as no one turned the forbidden tension dials. Each of us had to sew exactly the same projects - a pillow, an apron, a shift dress and finally something of our choice. Of course, each of those items took weeks to complete! By the time I was in fifth grade, I’d been sewing for several years, so it was a bit boring, but certainly better than sitting in a classroom doing math and science!

Until I began working for a local sewing machine dealer many years later, I had no idea that home economics was no longer a standard, universal subject. At the store, I found the need to teach beginning sewing. Customers wanted a nice machine but often had no idea how to begin using it or what they needed to make their sewing successful.

Sewing is a great skill as it offers such an amazing array of creative options from mending to garment construction to quilting to fiber arts and more. If you’re not familiar with sewing machines but you’d like to learn to sew, the How to Get Started Sewing video class will help you get ready for a fun adventure into a new creative world. If it’s been a while since you’ve sewn, How to Get Started Sewing is a great refresher, too.

Don’t forget to download the class notes beside the video and I’ll see you in class!