I want to say about 10 years or so ago my partner and I were at Sears buying bags for our vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaners are with the microwaves and sewing machines, so while we were there, he decided I needed a sewing machine. I want to laugh because that sounded funny to me.

So he bought me this sewing machine and I used a piece of paper to check out what the patterns are that you could sew, but as far as me learning how to actually sew something, it was hopeless. The sewing machine basically just sat in the hallway closet until recently. I wrote a blog post about The Enchanted Cottage recently, and I shared some pictures of a Zafu cover and Zabuton that I made with the sewing machine.

I bought a box of 11 sewing machine feet from Wish, which you can see in the picture above next to the sewing machine, but here is a close up of those feet. They all fit my sewing machine with the exception of the 2nd from the left on the top row. That is a zipper foot, but the sewing machine came with a zipper foot so I didn’t really need this one.

Now that I’ve made the Zafu and Zabuton, I’ve decided I wanted to make more things. My partner basically lives on the couch and he uses a bed sheet which I’m always seeing him adjust, so I would love to either cut up some of our old sheets that we never use to make him a fitted sheet, or buy some new fabric to make the fitted sheet. I also took an old dog shirt that never really fit our dog and took out the stitches so I can use as a template to make her some clothes from our old t-shirts. I can print some dog images on iron-on paper to decorate the shirts so they’re not plain. Of course I will start with our old t-shirts as practice, but I’d love to buy fleece or flannel fabric for winter clothing.

I figured while I’m learning to make clothing for the dog and fitted sheets, I might as well learn to make actual clothing that we can wear. They sell patterns at thrift stores that I can use to practice.

I attend YouTube University (heh a phrase my aunt used the other day) and I learn from watching videos. Today I learned how to make little bags with zippers and I also learned to make grocery bags for the store. I would love to learn to make wallets because my wallet is falling apart and my partner’s wallet is also falling apart. His wallet has a zipper on it and I would love if mine also had a zipper.

It took 10 years for me to get excited about using a sewing machine, but at least I got there. What’s funny is that I was excited about getting it until we actually got it and I realized I had no clue what I was doing, then I guess I rejected it. Well, that excitement has been renewed, and that’s good.