Fear of the Unknown

In my last post I wrote about a challenge I set myself to not purchase any new clothes until October. In conjunction with this I have also realised to be successful in making and altering my own clothes, I need to be more educated in the features of my trusty Singer. When I started seriously sewing I was using a beautiful 1955 Singer 201k, which is the ultimate work horse. That baby would sew through leather as if it were the thinnest cotton but the trouble was it only did a straight stitch. I am lucky enough to own an abundance of different attachments for it including a zig zag and button holer. But I found these increasingly frustrating to use with little or no instructions. I decided when I enrolled in a dress making course last year that I would invest in a modern machine to enable me to learn the skills first and then I could transfer these to the 201k at a later date. Anyone who sews will know that modern machines are equipped with up to hundreds of different stitches and all kinds of trickery but on average only a fraction of these features will ever get used. So regarding my challenge, I have been playing about with some of my lesser used machine functions and am actually quite proud of the results! I'd never attempted a button hole until this evening and I'd never tried to sew an actual button on using a machine before! I thank the good people at Singer for the latter as I HATE sewing buttons on at the best of times so this has really changed things up for me! My next experiment will be with the decorative/embroidery stiches which will look great when hemming clothes or adding appliqué to cushions. I've got plenty of scrap material to try this on and hopefully it will yield some productive results. All in all I would encourage anyone with a sewing machine to get out of their comfort zone and try some of these unused functions because you never know, they could become the most useful resources you have.