Welcome to my sewing compendium
Hi, my name is Rachel, I live in the Waikato in New Zealand with my husband and daughter, I really enjoy sewing things for family and friends. I started sewing in mid 2018 (in my late 30s) after a friend of mine held a workshop on sewing a winter vest – she is actually a very cool sewist and runs lilypie bags.
For some reason this time, doing a workshop with my friend, sewing actually stuck with me (unlike the other times I was taught at school or by my long suffering Aunty). I do remember at school that sewing held virtually no interest for me, one of my friends did sewing right through school, I thought the things she made were pretty cool but that was about all the enthusiasm I had towards sewing. Possibly as I now have a small daughter that very much likes “princess ballerina rainbow unicorn” style (apparently all aspects of this should try to be included in daily outfits) sewing seems more relevant to me than it ever did before. It may also possibly be that as a stay at home mum I’ve had the time to see the possibilities that I hadn’t before, or even that while I’ve grown and matured it’s resulted in a greater respect for the sewing machine and the amazing things that can be created with one.
While my friend who held the workshop was great and was happy to help me out with this new adventure, I didn’t want to be annoying her every 5min with all the endless questions I had (honestly it felt like everytime I learnt something new it just created 10 more questions). So I ended up doing a huge amount of my learning via google and YouTube and at some point ended up with over 300 bookmarked pages, a similar number of saved posts on Facebook and YouTube and an out of control Pinterest account.
I have a tendency to be somewhat haphazard and chaotic in the way that I do things, along with assuming that I’ll remember exactly what I’ve done each time. I finally decided I needed a better way to keep track of all my projects, what I did and what i’ve learnt (as I’ve now found out, coming back to things 3 months later – I don’t always remember what I did!). As much as I’ve previously always been terrible at taking notes (again, always assuming I’ll just remember it), I decided I needed to put my big girl pants on and just do it. After a bit I thought the best way to keep track of all these notes would be to have them set out nicely on a website and if I’m going to do that I might as well set it up to see if it could be a help for others as well.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently learning about websites, blogs and social media (not quite as easy or as cheap as I first thought to set up just how I wanted) I’ve also discovered affiliate links and google ads. I’m hoping I can add these tastefully without making a mess of my website and fingers crossed start earning a bit of cash (which, let’s face it, I’m going to spend on more fabric and more patterns).
Please be aware that I am far away from being an expert, this is a hobby page and is primarily a way for me to try to compile and organise the things I learn and the projects I do. I’ve also learnt over the years that finishing something is more important than having something perfect – although I do have to remind myself of that again from time to time!
Please note that affiliate links will make no difference to your purchase if you use them, they simply mean that I would receive a small commission from your purchase, which would be very much appreciated! The dream being that I could maybe someday make a full time job from this, rather than having to go out and get a real job (well, dreams are free)!
Wishing you the best in your adventures, Rachel.