So, I’m not the best at sewing. I did, however, grow up in a house where the whirring sound of my mom’s brown Pfaff sewing machine was as normal and commonplace as the sound of a TV in some homes. My mom made a lot of our clothes, including a stellar pair of zebra print hammer pants WITH a shirt that had a zebra head on it with googly eyes. I’m being for real. I sported that outfit around school like nobody’s business, my side ponytails and all!

Much to my mom’s dismay, I was never interested in sewing or crafting when I was growing up. To me, our ornament-making session, handmade hair bows matching my outfits and all the fancy holiday cookies were what ALL moms did. There didn’t seem to be anything special or magical about it back then. In the present though, I understand her need to craft and make. I GET it, finally.

As you may remember, the hubs got me a new sewing machine for Christmas. I really wanted to make a good go at it, instead of fumbling with how to thread it and making sure the tension was correct. New machines, as I found out, aren’t nearly as difficult to operate as old beige machines from more than half a century ago.

So I took my first sewing class at Stitches in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Seattle. For this class, we were making Amy Butler’s Kimberly bag. This looks like a simple bag, but for a gal who has never sewn-in a zipper, made pleats, worked with hard sturdy interfacing or cut from a pattern, it was kind of a challenge.

I made it through with only minor interfacing-to-fabric wrinkling, a little sketchy stitching on the pleated parts and decidedly non-straight lines for the handles. All in good time, though. I’ll learn!

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