Revealing my traumatic incident

Today I thought I`d tell you the story of my traumatic first meeting with a sewing machine. It took place at my school when I was about 13 years old. Before that I had only watched my grandmother sewing away on her old (antique) Singer. We were assigned to make an apron, and got to choose fabric and size ourselves. I remember picking out a red fabric with big white hearts or flowers.

Tracing and cutting the pattern was no picnic I recall, and when I finally made it, I discovered that the pattern I had used was too small! Well, I still had hope for the project, and optimistic went to the sewing machine to sew for the very first time. Mind you, this was the schools sewing machines, tampered with by lots of unexperienced hands before I got to it, and probably not well maintained. I sat down, deeply focused, and trod the pedal down. WROOOMMMMMMM!!

When I got over the shock, and came around to removing my foot from the pedal, I had sewn a long, long seam into the middle of my apron. Now I started getting a little aggravated! I took a not too sharp scissor to cut the thread, and then it happened! I cut a big whole in the fabric!!! I will not repeat the words that came out of my ever so young mouth at that point. If my grandma had heard me, she would have washed my mouth with soap! (Mind you, I am from the north of Norway, and our language is more “juicy” than in other parts of the country…)

That was it! I had come to the end of my rope! I loudly pronounced that I would never ever touch a sewing machine again. I threw the apron in the bin, and went on to embroider a cushion instead…

Twenty years or so later I needed new curtains, and finally forced myself to sew them. To my big surprice I discovered that there was a whole new generation of sewing machines out there. Machines that did what I asked them to do, and that I actually understood. What can I say? The rest is history…

Have fun sewing

Siv Hege