The Adventure Begins

Let me start by introducing myself!  My name is Jenna and I'm a wife and mother to two beautiful girls ages 7 and 9.  Their nicknames around the house are Pickle and Banana so that's what I'll refer to them as in this blog for privacy reasons.  My husband is from Australia, so I'll refer to him as Aussie.  And me....I don't get a cute nickname lol....just Jenna.  :)

I'm a SAHM and I'm brand spanking new to sewing - sort of.  I did sew some in home economics class but it's been a long time ago - I'm almost 32 now - so I really don't remember any of it!  A few years ago I decided I wanted to learn to sew, bought a sewing machine, some fabric, a few tools that I didn't know what to do with but they looked useful lol......and a couple of useless helpful books on How to Sew.  This was before the days of YouTube - MySpace was still new on the scene...anyone remember MySpace???  Yeah back in the dinosaur days of 2004 or so lol.  Anywho....I made a sad attempt at sewing and I'm ashamed to say......I gave up because it was just too overwhelming at the time to try and teach myself.  Now I'm older, hopefully wiser, more patient, and I feel like I'm up to the challenge.  PLUS there's lots of video and picture tutorials online which are soooo helpful because I'm that type of learner.  If you show me what to do, I can do it.  If I just read it in a book.....well I hate to read so what's that tell ya?

Anyway I dug my crusty old sewing machine out of my mom's garage (haha j/k it's not crusty lol...it's actually nice - a Brother CS 8060 which is a computerized machine).  I cleaned it up, gathered up my little sewing baskets with all my unused stuff in them, and started sorting through it and figuring out what I had and still needed to get.  I started watching some videos on youtube and it all started coming back to me.....from HomeEc.....from dinosaur 2004.....and I jumped in there and started playing around.

Tonight I got my sewing room set up - it sure is bare!  I just have a table with my sewing machine on it, and a towel for ironing stuff (I do own an iron but no ironing board lol), and I stole my kids old toy bin that they never use anyway to put my sewing supplies in.  After several hours of familiarizing myself with my machine (hello old friend lol)....I felt confident enough to try a few things and surprised myself at how much I remembered and had learned just from watching youtube videos!

So first and foremost, let me thank Vanessa over at www.craftygemini.com for her awesome video tutorials because she rocks!!

So my plan for this blog.............

Since I'm a noob, if you are here looking for advice from a pro or perfect patterns you can duplicate with ease, you might be sadly disappointed lol.  I am learning and having fun.  I'm not expecting perfection out of myself whatsoever....I will be learning as I go!  But I will be documenting the process here and maybe doing some noob tutorials so that fellow noobs can learn from my mistakes and then go out and make their own!  So you can be on the lookout for tutorials which will basically document each step of whatever project I'm working on with pictures and text.  Maybe one day I'll jump into videos but not anytime soon.  My ultimate goal is to learn how to quilt like a pro as well as make clothes for my kids, gifts for friends and family, home decor for my house (curtains, tablerunners, etc.).  So be on the lookout for the first tutorials coming up in the next week or two.  I have two things in mind that I want to do a tut on....making your own hair scrunchie, and also making a simple curtain.  It just so happens I need curtains for my sewing room so I'll be killing two birds with one stone!

I'm looking forward to sharing what I learn here on this blog, and also with networking with other bloggers and sites that I find interesting or useful!  Thanks for reading!