The Sewing Place

Reception => Hi, I'm new... => Topic started by: Emerion on February 10, 2019, 21:39:48 PM

Title: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Emerion on February 10, 2019, 21:39:48 PM
I’m an almost complete beginner. I have inherited a beautiful old Singer machine from my aunt, and as it is hand-cranked it doesn’t scare me like my mother’s old electric one did. So I'm keen to teach myself a few skills. I have followed a couple of easy projects from Pinterest, but keep managing to turn promising ones into a mess. I expect that’s par for the course though, so I’m not daunted. My machine only does straight stitches, so I won’t be doing fancy stuff. 
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: fajita on February 10, 2019, 21:45:37 PM
Welcome @Emerion  :flower: :drink:
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Greybird on February 10, 2019, 22:22:16 PM
Hello and welcome. I started with a straight stitch hand crank machine and I expect lots of others did too. There will be many things you can do on it.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Renegade Sewist on February 10, 2019, 23:10:06 PM
Welcome!  :flower: Most people only use their straight stitch anyway. especially quilters. You can still do fancy stuff, just not fancy stitches!

Let us know what you want to sew and we can steer you toward a reliable tutorial or information source, plus answer questions here. Pinterest is a great source of ideas but when you're new at something and you don't know what you don't know it can be very hard to tell if a project or tutorial has decent instructions suitable for a newbie that will produce good results.

Hang around the sewing forums enough and you'll find plenty of us mess up projects now and then too. You learn by doing.

Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Manuela on February 11, 2019, 07:54:21 AM
Welcome to The Sewing Place @Emerion. Don’t worry about your machine, those old straight stitchers are real work horses, and attachments that add more functions are easily found on Ebay.
Tutorial can differ quite a bit. If the maker doesn’t provide images of the finished article, it’s better to stay away. Anyone can put tutorials online, whether they have the required skills is anybody’s guess.

Here some sites I’d recommend:
https://thesewingdivas.wordpress.com/category/tutorials/ (https://thesewingdivas.wordpress.com/category/tutorials/)
They stopped posting years ago, but it’s well worth scrolling through the archives

https://fashion-incubator.com/tutorials/ (https://fashion-incubator.com/tutorials/)
She posts fairly infrequently, but the tutorial section is brilliant.

http://stitchesandseams.blogspot.com/2001/02/tutorials.html (http://stitchesandseams.blogspot.com/2001/02/tutorials.html)
Debbie still posts from time to time, here a lnk to her tutorial section
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Efemera on February 11, 2019, 08:23:23 AM
Welcome from me too.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: BrendaP on February 11, 2019, 08:28:36 AM
Welcome to TSP.

What sort of projects are you hoping to make?   The old  :vintage: straight stitchers are good for the darkside (AKA patchwork) and the stitch quality is usually excellent, but they can be used for a lot more as well.  Once upon a time that's all that anyone had and a lot of fancy stuff was made with them.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: b15erk on February 11, 2019, 08:55:57 AM
A big welcome from me too Emerion!  Just remember that we all had to start somewhere, it's just that some of us started earlier than others.

You will get an abundance of good advice on TSP, and lots of help from experienced sewers.

Just remember, even the most experience of us have failed projects!  ;)

Enjoy!

Jessie
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: WildAtlanticWay on February 11, 2019, 09:16:09 AM
Hello Emerion,

Hello from West cork, Ireland. I’m a newbie sewer too and have joined a sewing class to help me progress. I definitely recommend doing that if you can find a nice small class with a very experienced teacher.

Will you be watching the new series of the Great British Sewing Bee tomorrow night on BBC2? I’m planning to record it and watch it later in the week when I’m on my own.

Do you have any thoughts about the types of projects you want to try? I started off at the course last term making very basic things such as a pin cushion, an apron, a doorstop and a MugRug.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: hernibs on February 11, 2019, 14:20:37 PM
Welcome to the TSP - remember there are no silly questions....we've all been there at some stage.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Nevis5 on February 11, 2019, 14:52:05 PM
Hello and welcome from me too, @Emerion  !  Feel free to pick our brains any time - we all had to learn sometime.  Hope you find sewing to be a rewarding and fun pastime xx
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Surest1tch on February 12, 2019, 18:29:34 PM
Welcome from me too. My favourite machine is a straight stitch that's older than me, when you learn how much you can make with it, I'm fairly sure you'll fall in love with it
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Bowerbird on February 20, 2019, 06:17:08 AM
Hi @Emerion, welcome from me too.  :drink: :cake: I hope you get lots of pleasure from your aunt's machine.

Luckily I don't have any evidence lying around of my first forays into dress making, tres embarrassment. My efforts at making clothes for a toddler were no better, but at least she grew out of everything before it had time to fall apart. But there is something satisfying about it all & I'm still sewing 45 years later, with varying degrees of success.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Emerion on February 20, 2019, 08:18:40 AM
Wow! What a big friendly welcome. Thank you. Those are good points about the reliability of tutorials, and thanks for the advice on good websites and classes. Do you normally take your own machine to a class? At the moment, I need to make a couple of pillowcases and mend a skirt ( already had excellent advice on that one). I would really like to be able to alter clothes though, starting simply of course. I do kind of hanker after a beautiful quilt, but doubt that I’ve got the patience, so I’ll leave that one for a bit I think.
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Deafoldbat on February 20, 2019, 19:23:09 PM
Quote
  I do kind of hanker after a beautiful quilt, but doubt that I’ve got the patience, so I’ll leave that one for a bit I think.

The dark side will be waiting, whenever you're ready!
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: BrendaP on February 20, 2019, 20:06:47 PM
My favourite machine is a straight stitch that's older than me, when you learn how much you can make with it, I'm fairly sure you'll fall in love with it
Title: Re: Hello, I’m new on this site
Post by: Roger on February 20, 2019, 20:35:24 PM
Hi Emerion!
the old Singers are great - look after them and they'll outlast us all, all they need is oiling and defluffing from time to time.

Welcome to the TSP Im not a great sewist (I'm not a sewer... ;)  )  so I'm always here for help :)