I went to Daisy and Trout’s place, where she set up two machines for us to work across from each other. First things first, I need some basics. Good scissors, a tape measure, lots of pins, an ironing board set up, and white pencil for drawing are an absolute must. As is prosecco.

This is a seam gage. I’m still not totally clear what all it does, but it’s helpful in helping you mark where you need to cut, pin, or iron fabric. Daisy’s being a stickler about me ironing everything before and after I cut and sew it.

Get your bobbin threaded. This is going to take some practice.

The “easy” plan for the day was shortening an apron and adding pockets to another one. That meant measuring three times and cutting once. Then with a seam ripper, I detached the lace from the bottom to reattach to the shorter one. I liked the ripping part. The lace needed to be held in place with lots of pins. Lots and lots. I don’t like the pinning part, but Daisy won’t let me cut corners, especially on my first day.

We have liftoff! Learning the machine is definitely the hardest part. At home, my machine is going through some major bobbin issues and troubleshooting is an intimidating as a just-starting-outer. First I made a seam, and then set to work attaching the fragile lace.

On to the next project. (Disclaimer, this first part took several hours- not for the faint-hearted!)

Daisy helped me pick a tasteful color combo for the pockets.

… and made a template.

Once I got going, it didn’t go as well. This is exactly the same problem I keep running into at home. See how the thread is going bananas? I didn’t load it properly. Thank goodness Daisy is a million times more patient than I am. I threw out some c’s and t’s, which helped a little, but not much.

That’s when we decided it was a good time for cosmos. It helped a lot.

All done! Stay tuned tomorrow for pics of the finished pieces.