Great little competition

Will you be sewing presents and decorations for Christmas this year? Submit a gift idea to The Sewing Directory, run by the lovely Fiona Pullen and be entered into her Christmas Creativity Competition.

You could win a Janome Memory Craft 5900QC worth £799 and the chance to be published in Cloth Magazine. There's a total of £1,000 in prizes and the closing date for entries is October 20.

The judges are Deborah Shepherd Creative Director of Janome, Ali Myer Community Craft Leader at David & Charles, and Harriet De Winton and Ros Marshall, Editors of Cloth Magazine. More information

And watch out for a great new article from Fiona due to be published on our site soon, with some great tips on how to choose a sewing class. 

Sew far not sew good!

There was a snippet in the Mail this weekend that caught my attention.

Lauren Booth explained how she had bought a sewing machine for her daughter for Christmas.  A great choice of present and a fantastic way to get our kids into sewing, but….and here is the big but, none of them could work out how to use it.  As she pointed out, the new fax machine was ready and assembled and sending and receiving faxes all over the world and yet here was a seemingly simple piece of equipment that seemed to be destined to remain a mystery to them all.

One of the main complaints she had was that none of them could work out how to thread it properly or how to manage the tension.  She wanted to know why the sewing machine industry hadn’t kept pace with technology….a fair point.

She's not alone.  Only the other day a friend of mine admitted to throwing her sewing machine away because it kept chewing up the thread; she assumed that it was broken.  It hadn’t entered her head that it might be a problem with the tension or a mismatch with needle, thread and fabric.

It seems to me that this is a widespread problem.  Lots of people out there want to take up sewing, but are being put off by the problems they encounter with their machines.

So what to do? I'm looking for people to share their hints, tips and experiences on getting started with a sewing machine.

1. Do you have any pearls of wisdom that you think would help the novice seamstress?
2. Did you encounter problems when you first started sewing?
3. How did you overcome them?
4. What sort of projects did you start out with?

Please let us have any comments, ideas, stories, examples, answers by commenting below or emailing us at info@makeitandmendit.com
Let’s get people sewing again!

Hilary