A team of women from our church went to another country and reported that the ladies there had taken the motors off their electric sewing machines, and converted them to treadle machines.
I was amazed. "Why would they do that?" I wondered.
But it made perfect sense when I realized that their source of electricity was off as often as it was on.
But there are times when even a treadle machine is not the answer... like when you are a child who needs adult supervision while using mom's machine, but mom isn't always available every time you want to create something. The solution is needle and thread.
This summer I offered to teach a few girls in my class how to hand sew. We'll learn how to sew things onto fabric, like buttons and snaps and maybe even sequins and beads.
Then there are ways of stitching two pieces of fabric together with special seams that were used all the time before the sewing machine. And what if you want to make a stuffie with a face embroidered on it? Or you want to embellish the very plain top you made in class earlier with some cute outline drawings.
To see how far I could take hand sewing, I embarked on this project of sewing a lined zipper pouch without ever using my sewing machine. It was a fun and relaxing process and didn't turn out too badly.
I was amazed. "Why would they do that?" I wondered.
But it made perfect sense when I realized that their source of electricity was off as often as it was on.
But there are times when even a treadle machine is not the answer... like when you are a child who needs adult supervision while using mom's machine, but mom isn't always available every time you want to create something. The solution is needle and thread.
This summer I offered to teach a few girls in my class how to hand sew. We'll learn how to sew things onto fabric, like buttons and snaps and maybe even sequins and beads.
Then there are ways of stitching two pieces of fabric together with special seams that were used all the time before the sewing machine. And what if you want to make a stuffie with a face embroidered on it? Or you want to embellish the very plain top you made in class earlier with some cute outline drawings.
To see how far I could take hand sewing, I embarked on this project of sewing a lined zipper pouch without ever using my sewing machine. It was a fun and relaxing process and didn't turn out too badly.