wonder if they have that here??? Then again I have a standing invitation from a friend.
I love to sew. My mom got me started around 6th grade, and my grandma bought me a steelhead Kenmore in a cabinet for my HS graduation present (she bought my brother a car 
). With that machine, I have mended, done light upholstery, and made clothes and draperies and other home goods all my life. DH gifted me a serger for Christmas one year because, based on the lessons he learned from Tim Allen on Home Improvement, he felt certain that I needed the fancier tool and couldn’t understand why I didn’t use it. It sat in the back of the closet for years until I donated it about 15 years ago. (I don’t think he knows it’s gone.) I bought a second machine to have at the cabin and was disappointed to see that almost all of them are plastic now.
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I love my server, I use it all the time. I wouldn’t call it fancier, it just does something a regular sewing machine can’t do.
I would love to work in a quilt shop!
I haven’t done a lot of sewing recently, but I sure did when I was younger. I have a Singer treadle sewing machine that has some very neat attachments like a pleater, and a gatherer. I haven’t used it in years, but those things are hard to break.
I had a very old singer portable that weighed so much it was not very portable. I was then gifted a singer with a bunch of oddball attachments. I gave it away…and bought a very simple White Sewing Machine. All I wanted was a zipper foot, and the ability to make buttonholes easily…in addition to straight stitches and zig zag.
We have a fabulous quilting shop in our tiny town. They have tons of wonderful fabrics, and sewing notions. And they offer classes. I really should take a class and make something like a throw.
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Nice to know. Now where can get fabric at a decent price?
Interesting link. I recently found some snaps in my grandmother’s sewing stuff and added them to pockets on my shorts (to keep cellphone from popping out, especially during pickleball games). Per the link, looks like there are also some magnetic options available for similar future projects.
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Thrift stores can be good places to find sewing notions - especially vintage ones like rikrac, zippers etc
What kind of fabric are you looking for?
I have ordered cotton quilting fabric from many online shops but don’t really know about sources for clothes/fashion.
I am in a neighborhood sewing group that makes dresses for 3rd world countries through an interdenominational group. We were referred to it by our City’s Facebook sewing group. We are about 30 women. We get fabric and notions donated by church groups, and from thrift shops.
My mother and grandmother taught me to sew. Then I had Home Ec in 7th grade. I really was not interested at that time, but made the requisite items: gym drawstring bag, smock blouse, shorts, etc.
I was supposed to inherit my grandmother’s machine but it mysteriously disappeared at the hands of an envious cousin who didn’t sew.
I used my mother’s Singer 221 Featherweight to sew. My ex boyfriend’s mother gave me her machine to make a shower curtain and liner. She was so happy with it, she gave me her machine. It had a weird name but it was solid metal. None of her 5 daughters knew how to sew, nor did they want to. I got her machine.
During Covid, my city’s sewing group (1700) made scrub caps and masks. I burned through 2 machines in 10 months.
I now have a Singer Confidence, for quick patch jobs, and a Pfaff 720. I sew weekly. I turn my monthly donation of sewn dresses in tomorrow!
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My mother sewed. She made tons of clothing both for herself and for me. She made the majority of my dresses for my cotillion dances, my prom dress, and a couple of dresses for my college formals. She made work clothes for me when I first got out of college. She could make anything! She never had an interest in doing home decor items - no pillows or curtains. I absolutely loved going with her to the local fabric store and looking through pattern books! When we added onto our house we got a family room and my mother got a sewing room! She designed it herself. It had a large counter height peninsula for cutting out fabrics and drawers designed to the proper size to hold pattern envelopes. I feel like there was also a lot of compartments in drawers for holding scissors and spare buttons, snaps, zippers, etc. I know the room also had a specific storage system set up for fabric, but I can’t recall what it was.
When my mother died, her sister (who was also a sewer) insisted that I take her machine rather than putting it into the estate sale. She insisted I go take sewing lessons. What a disaster! I had never taken home ec. Cutting the fabric was soooo stressful to me! Sewing just wasn’t in me. To me, taking a pattern, a pile of fabric, thread, and other notions to create an article of clothing is akin to taking a pile of lumber, bricks, and shingles and building a house! It overwhelmed me. I eventually donated her machine somewhere.
I know several of ds’s high school friends (one is male) who are learning to sew. My nephew also does very nice work! He is into cosplay and makes costumes for that. He attended a Renaissance fair last weekend, and made his costume.
I am so impressed with people who sew! I do think it’s an awfully expensive hobby now. My mother made so many of my clothes because it was more affordable than buying them. That meant I could have more!!! There was no, “fast fashion,” back then. I did have a dreadful phase (probably around age 13-14), where I was an unappreciative brat who didn’t want any clothing that was, “homemade.” Eventually I came to truly appreciate the benefit of having clothing that was unique and perfectly tailored to me.
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You might have gone to junior high around the same time I did. We made the gym bag and the smocked blouse. One semester of sewing, one of cooking. The boys took shop and ornamental horticultural. I can sew for kids and household stuff but I’m not good enough for clothes that need to fit.
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That’s exactly what we did at my California school! I took wood shop/metal shop, the next year, but I wasn’t allowed to take auto shop the following year! Something about too few spots and my being a girl would distract the boys!
I was thinking about this thread.
The bridesmaids’ dresses in my wedding were sewn. I had four bridesmaids and all but one’s mother sewed. I was in at least two and maybe three other weddings where that was the case.
Anyone else?
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My bridesmaids dresses were sewn too. My mom bought the fabric and patterns. My sister and I sewed my prom gown. My mom sewed a LOT of clothing for my sister and me growing up. But we had multiple fabric stores back then and easier to find fabrics you liked.
I recently found a pile of unused fabric I’d bought over 20 years ago. I washed it and it came out so beautifully from the dryer–no shrinkage and basically wrinkle free. The quality of fabric was so much better back then.
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My D and nearly all her friends, male and female, sew or are into some kind of crafts. D has become excellent at needle point, knitting, and crocheting and she can do basic sewing. The last guy she was seeing made his own clothing and had a mini Joanne’s set up in his living room. My grandmother and great grandmother would have been proud with the skills, probably less OK with the end products - swear-y embroidery hoops, ren faire outfits, etc…
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This is interesting to me and where I originally thought this thread would focus: on our kids’ generation. My D knits extensively in addition to sewing and belongs to a knitting group. She feels she has ADHD even though she has never sought an official diagnosis, and knitting helps her focus on her research work (she’s a PhD student). The sewing is more a way to get customized clothes and avoid shopping fast fashion. I also have thought about how her late grandmother and great-grandmother would be proud of her skills.
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I graduated from a public high school high school a million years ago and everyone (girls and boys) had to take Home Economics. It was a year-long class and we had a sewing unit (replace a button, sew a hem), a cooking unit (scrambled eggs and muffins), and a shop unit (we made a lamp). Everyone had to bring in an empty liquor bottle (you can tell this was a long time ago) which we filled with marbles or sand (something decorative) to hide the lamp rod. When my Dad passed away, my brother was cleaning out his house and he found the lamp 40-some years later. My Dad was using it.
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The bridesmaid’s dresses in both of the weddings I was in (not my own) were handmade. The problem with that, though, is that not everyone’s skills are equal and the results show or, at least, they did in these examples (badly installed zippers, visible hemming, poor fit, etc.). It was clear that some made their best effort but, apparently, did not seek help or did not care. I would not have gone that route for my wedding, but I only had one bridesmaid and she wore a lovely gown she already owned.
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My dad who passed at 99 still had the shoe shine kit I had made in Brownies!
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