It’s Blogvent, day 8, where I blog daily in December!

Sewing is fun but inertia exists

I’ve been wanting to get back into sewing for a while. When JoAnn Fabrics announced they were going to be shutting down this year, I raided the sales with gusto, with a whole lot of plans to make EVERYTHING. Clothes! Bags! Pillows! Everything!

…then I gave birth and that did not happen.

My sewing machine that I’ve had for years, collecting dust, continued to collect dust.

I’m not the best sewer in the world, and very much a newbie by most definitions. But, I come from a family of very talented sewers, so I know what’s possible, if I just pick up the dang machine and start something. It is so hard to just start something.

That being said, my sister-in-law mentioned over Thanksgiving that she was going to buy a sleeve for her weirdly-proportioned off-brand e-reader, and it seemed like the perfect little project to get off my butt and actually make something.

Threading the machine is the hardest part of sewing

Okay, threading a machine isn’t that bad, but oh my word it is far more annoying than it should be. I watched this video on how to thread a sewing machine probably 20 times. I knew the basics of going around all the different parts, but handling the bobbin was very, very frustrating and took far more time than it should have.

The actual project

The fabric I chose for this case was… not a good choice? Ha. It was incredibly fluffy. It’s like sherpa-y on one side and t-shirt-y on the other. I picked it because it would have some good padding for the device without me having to sew on another layer. But, I had to do a lot of cutting around the fluff to actually get it to sew well.

The thread kept getting caught and I fully lost a couple needles at one point that were holding everything together. But, on the plus side, the fluff was able to hide some of my uneven lines!

I sewed the edges over at first so there would be no frayed edges, and then the rectangle inside out so that I could hide the seams more. I had to do some trimming because it was so thick that it got hard to fold!

But, once it was inside out, it was not too shabby!

The edges weren’t perfect straight lines, but it was juuust good enough to get the job done.

And the final result fit the e-reader perfectly! I kind of wish I added some kind of strap or button from the beginning, but it was a great little project to get back into sewing again, and now I will be a sewing fiend. Theoretically.