There is no such thing as a perfectly straight line

It's Friday already? Why does the week go by so much faster when you have homework?

Sewing homework that is.

I'm on week five of my sewing class and I've basically come to the realization that sewing is 95% preparing the fabric and 5% actually sewing on the machine itself.

I've also learned that:

:: I'm really good at making bobbin art

:: Fabric must be on grain. If it's not on grain, then dire things will happen to you

:: i like to pin my fingers more than I like to pin fabric

:: sewing is like taking notes in a lecture in that I can easily tell where I've fallen asleep or lost focus

:: my sewing machine is unmoved by loud cussing

:: no matter what the teacher says, sometimes it IS the machine's fault

:: if I think I'm sewing an amazingly straight line: four times out of five, my machine will have unthreaded itself without my noticing and I'm just, in reality, poking a whole lot of tiny holes in my fabric.

:: 6 cm is never just 6 cm: if I measure 6 cm from one edge and pin, then I measure 6 cm from the other edge and pin, then when I hold these two pieces of fabric together, I bet you they won't match

:: linen wrinkles if you look at it

:: linen wrinkles even faster after you've ironed it

:: you can get one, or the other...but not both.

I took two trips to Fabricland in the last month. The first time, I had to get an easy skirt pattern with a zipper and a waist line. Patterns were on sale for $2.99 so I picked up two. When I left, I was told that one pattern had a zipper but no waistline and the other pattern had a waistline but no zipper.

The second time I went to Fabricland, I wanted to get a couple of zippers. We were told to get an invisible zipper for a pouch and a zipper for our skirt. My skirt pattern asked for a 7" regular zipper. Fabricland had all sorts of zippers. Unfortunately, the invisible zippers started at 8" and the regular zippers started at 7". Evidently, it didn't matter what size of invisible zipper we bought for our pouch, so I went with the 8" invisible zipper for the pouch and the 7" regular zipper for my skirt. After all that deliberation, it turns out that I thought it out all wrong. I should have bought the 8" invisible zipper for the skirt and it didn't matter what size zipper we got for our pouch.

I think I'm missing several key chapters from the book of "THINGS THAT PEOPLE ARE BORN KNOWING" in relation to sewing. Either that or it's a conspiracy and everybody else is on the secrets.

Picking up knitting wasn't this hard. Buy the yarn. Buy the sticks. Go.