When booking onto Sew in Brighton’s Rework Your Wardrobe workshop I somehow missed the line about having to have previous basic experience. I don’t. I have zero experience, but wanted to know how to take up vintage dresses so I can occasionally take my friends’ machines for a spin. Cue learning faster than I can (now) sew. Here are five things I picked up in the three-and-a-half-hour session:
1. The ‘make a tote bag’ class is a rights of passage. And one I probably should have taken – just as the other five students in the class had – before going off piste on my first sewing attempt.
2. Treat your foot control pad with the type of hesitation you might if there were a small kitten cowering underneath it and your thread will come out. Every three minutes. It seems I have a similar approach to sewing as I do to driving and while being cautious is good, being so slow that you become a danger is not. Even my needle gave up and fell out – but at least I now know how to thread a machine.
3. Even I can take up a striped dress. Turns out I brought in the sewing equivalent of a painting-by-numbers book. No measuring tape for me! Just cut along the lines, turn up and sew – not forgetting the back-stitch at the start and end of each line so it doesn’t unravel (yep, I know stuff). Taking scissors to decades-old vintage pieces is scary, but I’m now the proud owner of a very cool 1970s Lacoste jersey dress that I’ll actually wear.
4. Only lovely people sew. Yes, everything you saw on The Great British Sewing Bee is true. And watching other people tackle their sewing projects proved just as useful as getting stuck into your own. We found out how to take in trousers at waist, dresses at the bust and also picked up a few inventive ways to repair rips. One lucky little boy is going to be over the moon that his favourite whale T-shirt has been brought back to life with 3D ‘bubble’ pearl beads.
5. Sewing teachers are magicians. The most impressive transformation of the day was my friend’s dress-to-skirt project, which involved cutting above the seam, lots of unpicking and adding a thick elastic waistband. But the real ‘wow’ moment came when teacher Zoe (of Brighton Craftaganza fame) made stitching in an invisible zip look easy even with six open-mouthed women staring over her shoulder.
The next Rework Your Wardrobe workshop will be held on Sunday 5th October from 10:30am – 2pm and costs £39 per person. To book, click here.