Thursday, May 29, 2014

#TBT: How I learned to sew

This week, I had an idea suddenly for throwback Thursday! I want to tell the story of how I got into sewing. I'm also using this story to mark the event of me getting a sewing machine from my favorite person, Brynn :), as a gift for my graduation from college. Yes, I'm a graduate now. Almost a two week old graduate (oh, how time flies). 

During my high school career, I was already a crafty youngin'. I was really into knitting my own stuff. I even joined the knitting club at my high school for a short period. Of course, I got kind of bored with every project unless I could finish it in maybe two days tops.
I started to go to thrift stores as a senior in high school, mostly towards the end of my last semester. I also became more fashion conscious and went on Lookbook.nu and Modcloth daily to look at the trends.


Here's me as a senior in high school, wearing one of my first thrifted purchases, a dark velvet vest. I was so young!

College is the place where you an reinvent yourself, so I tried to express myself more through fashion when I entered college.
I got really into crafting with t-shirts. I would draw designs on my them, like "Moo-stache" with a cow drawing, and "Konnichiwa" in hiragana when I started learning Japanese.
I bought this book "108 Ways to Transform a T-shirt" from Generation T, which I used to kick start my learning to sew. In the intro to the book, they include many hand stitches: names and descriptions of what the stitch does and what you should use it for. I used this book to start sewing t-shirts into things. I would buy the color and amount of t-shirts I needed from AC Moore or Michael's, I would cut the shirts up just like you would any fabric, and I would sew the pieces together. It may sounds strange but that's how I did things. It helped to have the base of a t-shirt already so I could just add on to it whatever I wanted.

This happened throughout my freshman year at college and slightly longer. My first actual sewing project was a dress I made out of t-shirts for Semi-formal 2010 at my college.


I think it was good for my first sewing endeavor. It's interesting looking back at it and seeing how much I've gotten better at sewing. I sewed the seam that connects the top to the skirt with a back stitch because I was like "I want a strong seam here," but that was a mistake. The first time I tried it on after I sewed that seam, I realized I could not put it on because that stitch does not stretch at all. Needlesstosay, after all that, I was still proud of it. I handsewed it out of t-shirts in a weeks time! So I was happy.

After this, I started to sew more things, mostly cosplays. I'm still pretty proud of my Mion Sonozaki cosplay I sewed out of all t-shirts, except the tie. That tie was like the first thing I sewed not out of t-shirts. I followed a pattern for the first time with the tie as well


I sewed this in the summer after my freshmen year in college, so I had more experience by then but not much.

Since then, I've sewn some more cosplays, bows, skirts, etc. This year, I got into making circle skirts. Even with all the experience I've gained in handsewing, my first circle skirt didn't turn out the greatest. Sewing is a learning experience! I know that well.

So, I don't know how many people read my stuff, but I'm going to ask you guys anyway.
If you sew too, how'd you get into it? And are any of you interested in cosplay? Because I can totally post more on my cosplays.

Thanks for reading, or just looking :)

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