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Birthday Giveaways – Week 3
Are you having as much fun as we are? We are thoroughly enjoying reading all your comments about who taught you to sew! There are some great stories and they all show that each of our sewing adventures is unique and as individual as we are.
Last week we were giving away Fat Quarter Bundles of Dashwood’s Cuckoo’s Calling fabrics. Using a Random Number Generator, we picked these winners for Week 2 Birthday Giveaways!
Twitter – @SarahVonSew
Facebook – Kim Lyon
Blog – Alexandra Harper-Pailing
This week’s Birthday Giveaway will be for Fat Quarter Bundles of Dashwood’s Fly Away fabrics (pictured above)! Many thanks to Anbo, our fabric supplier, for sponsoring these Giveaways and helping us celebrate our Birthday!
To enter, please leave a comment on this blog (and, if you want, on our Facebook page and Twitter feed) letting us know your craziest sewing experience, or biggest sewing blunder! Let’s be bluntly honest… we can all chuckle together. We’ve all been there! Contest will be open through midnight Monday March 23. Winners will be announced Tuesday March 24.
I once spent all day making my daughter a top… Only for it not to fit her at all!
The amount of timesI have sat hand stitching using a cushion on my lap foe a base only to find I’ve stitched right throught the pillow as well. But even worse when by daughter was doing her a-level textile piece two years ago, she was cutting something out, when she stood up she had cut a big chunk out of the bottom of her dress she was wearing.
Made a lovely dress for a wedding in sheer fabric which needed to be lined. Somehow managed to get the sleeves in wrong – right in left side and vice versa! Wore it anyway but they felt queer, washed it afterwards and was hugely relieved when the sheer fabric shrank so I had good reason never to wear it again!
I spend more time unpicking than sewing or so it seems at times. How i manage to do some of the really silly basic mistakes, i will never know….wrong sides together, sleeves in inside out,the linning of a very very simple bag ended up on the outside and my beautiful fabic on the inside…oh dear oh dear. However, it doesnt matter i still love my sewing.
I have tried to sew a sleeve to the neclkine and also have sewn the inside legs together of trousers and ended up with a skirt
I spent ages cutting out HST triangles from my late husband’s shirts for a memory quilt for my eldest son and then chain piecing them to the white. When I proudly showed him the progress I had made my 16 year old said he’d changed his mind and he would like dark blue. Normally he’d get what he’d agreed to but as it is such a special quilt it’s back to the seam ripper. ….
Hate it when you quilt a cushion top only to find that the backing has folded back on itself. Thank goodness for seam rippers!
I agree with June – I sefinitely seem to unpick A LOT!!
My biggest mistakes are usually cutting errors, despite checking, checking, checking! But at least those are recut before the item is actually made, I always try to buy a little extra fabric, just in case!
My crazy sewing moments usually involve my daughter. A few years ago she decided she would like a skirt from a pair of my husband’s jeans we were throwing. No pressure but she was going out in it in a couple of hours. Then last year I had to make her a dress for the Christmas party adapted from two patterns when I hadn’t sewn a zip since school. Everyone asked if I was a designer. Just an accountant!
For World Book Day one year I made my daughter a Peter Rabbit outfit but left a pin in the furry leggings – ouch! Leaving pins behind seems to be a common thread in my sewing…
How I love sewing, just love looking at beautiful fabrics.
Making a fabric basket and the fleece ended up on the outside of the basket! Lots of unpicking to do to put it right.
i am just finishing making my little grandaughter a soft lawn cotton top with an embroidery anglise skirt using my new overlocker and discovered that the material is inside out on the front skirt panel, luckily it does not show if i trim all the loose ends off because i sure as heck am not unpicking all that stitching. (she might have to wear it in the garden)
In sewing class at school, (more than a few years ago) there was a woman, known as ‘the inspector’ who turned up every so often and she was much tougher than our teacher. My sewing, and that of a friend, was not good at that time and, as soon as she entered the door, we started unpicking our stitches as we knew she would tell us to do so.
Congratulations Isabel! You have won this week’s Birthday Giveaway! Please email us your mailing address at info@sewhot.co.uk, and we will mail you your gift!
As a small child I was always attempting to make clothes for my dolls but always failed miserably – things never went to plan. So I was looking forward to doing sewing at school, it was part of the curriculum back then. I remember choosing the blue fabric and was really excited when I managed to cut out the pattern correctly. I was equally proud when I had sewn some of the pieces together and it all matched perfectly. For the next stage I carefully prepared the puff sleeves and began to sew the first one in place, taking time to make sure the gathers were in the right position around the arm hole. I then very carefully and slowly started to stitch, making sure I was capturing all the fabric as I went round. Feeling very chuffed with myself as I inspected my hard work, I held up the dress to admire it and realised I had sewn the puffed sleeve into the neck hole!
My craziest sewing experience has to be stitching across the bottoms of my husbands pyjama legs making it impossible for him to get his legs in. This was a joke as he was going away on training and had to share a room with other guys, thought it would give them all a laugh as he tried to put them on for bed!
My biggest mistakes are not checking twice before cutting!! I have tons of scraps where I have rushed to get started and not measured properly!!!
My niece and I were having a craft afternoon, sewing presents for her mum and dad. What about me? she said, what can I make for me? What would you like I ask, thinking, simple bag. A dress, says Emily . Ah. So we got a length of lovely fabric, sewed it into a tube, sewed a casing at the top and waist, inserted elastic and bingo – the one hour dress. (only works if the model is under 9 and so absolutely no shaping required)
Years ago I bought some lovely velvet to make a lined pinafore dress (you know where this is going, don’t you?) Carefully cut out the pieces, pinned and sewed everything in place, feeling slightly smug that it all went together so easily…. pressed the finished dress and then noticed one half was a different colour to the other – I had completely forgot about the nap. I only had scraps of fabric left and couldn’t get any more – disaster! What a waste of time and money:-(
The biggest mistake of the last year….spending around four months hand-embroidering and beading the most amazing designs on a rectangle of heavy linen for a bathroom blind, only to find I’d cut the fabric around three inches too short for the window. Still crying!
My craziest sewing moment was when my son was very small trying to make a waterproof and wind proof pushchair cover for him. It was lovely in the end but only suitable materials at that time were dark gaberdine materials . Well, he is now 35 years old , and I can see that young mums now can buy lovely colourful fun covers for their pushchairs. Amazing how inventive we sewers are !
I once managed to wedge the sewing machine foot pedal under a pedestal table leg which meant the machine was running at full speed while I tried to kick the foot free, at the same time frantically trying to keep the fabric straight whilst the needle was running amok!
Many years ago I adapted a shirtwaister styled dress pattern to make a dress without buttons down the front. The fabric was very pretty and I was really pleased with how things were going. I bought a lovely lace collar and attached it around the neckline. It was only when I went to try it on that realised I had left no opening and could not get it over my head! With a little bit of ingenuity I cobbled together an opening at the front which closed with small pearl buttons and little loops. I wore and wore that dress and ever time a scrap of the fabric makes its way to the top of my scrap bag it brings back happy memories.
Sewing through my middle finger was a special hoghlight of sewing as a teenager! Luckily it didn’t put me off machine sewing. 45 years later I have discovered patchwork and am OBSESSED!
I tried quilting diagonally on a baby quilt started in the middle with my walking foot it ended up a diamond shaped quilt, had to unpick,
do it a different way and wash to get rid of stitch marks went and bought a new walking foot to try again another day
Having just got back into dressmaking after many years, I decided to make myself a top – but the fabric had very little difference between the right and wrong sides……
It wasn’t until I came to hand sew the yoke lining in that I found I’d sewn the side seams and the hem inside out…..and as I’d sewn the side seams on my overlocker you can understand why the top is still sat at the bottom of my pile of “to-do”
I can’t see any way out but to painstakingly unpick the overlocking and the hem and sew it the right way round!
Maybe I should just stick to patchwork and quilting – I never seem to get that wrong!
I was teaching a foundation piecing workshop, and decided to demonstrate the ‘fantastic’ Add a Quarter ruler I had just discovered. I used a students sample block to demonstrate how the ruler should be used, and then proceeded to completely cut off her whole seam allowance. Luckily they all saw the funny side.
I have only made one small quilt! I would like to have some lovely materials to attempt another one.