Tuesday, October 09, 2007 , early evening

Our new sewing machine (and why I hated Home Ec)

Flippy and I have been a bit stressed out lately, so two friends sent us a nice donation for Spiderman, plus a little extra that they wanted us to spend on ourselves.  I had thoughts of going to see Celine Dion in concert here, before her show closes in December, but tickets are so costly and it seemed sort of frivolous.  I spent a bit of the money on “special” things, but they were all investments for the pets, for example, I purchased some stuff at SuperZoo.  There was just nothing of substance that I felt good about buying for myself and Flippy, until we set eyes on a sewing machine.  I’ve made teddy bears and stuffed toys by hand since I was very young, but I’ve never been comfortable using a sewing machine.  We’ve been wanting to make our own cats toys (and possibly sell them), and I thought I could just sew them by hand, but the thought was a bit daunting.  I just didn’t know how I could ever work fast enough to make a profit if I had to make each and every little stitch myself, and thus, we set our sights on a sewing machine.  Our “dream machine” was the Brother SE-270D, just because it had good reviews on Amazon, and seemed like it had tons of potential.

Today I got lucky and found a brand new SE-270D for less than half price, so I grabbed it.  Then I felt all nervous, the way you do after you buy something expensive.  I know it will help make a lot of tasks easier if I learn how to use it properly, but I’ve always had a bad relationship with sewing machines.  My mother has been sewing her entire life (and still makes all kinds of cool stuff), and I love to sew by hand, but I had a terrible Home Economics teacher in 7th grade and she’s had a lasting effect.  I believe the class was actually called, “Family Studies”, and it taught sewing and cooking.  I still do love to cook, thank goodness, but the teacher was such a condescending witch that she took all joy out of learning.  I don’t think I even wanted to take that class—I wanted to take the woodworking class the boys were in—because I had no interest in ever being “a homemaker”.  Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that, but at the time, I felt like I was being limited and pigeonholed.

I seem to recall I flunked that class, the only one in my entire life!  I don’t know why, but maybe I didn’t finish a project or something… I know it was sewing-related.  The instructor was a middle-aged woman, not married, and perhaps she hated children or something but she was very prim and proper and wanted girls to behave a certain way.  I remember one day when class finished early, we were given a word-search puzzle to work on, and I was finding the words and circling each letter individually.  The teacher came and looked over my shoulder and said, very disgustedly, that I wasn’t doing it correctly and that I should be circling the entire word.  When I finished the puzzle I showed her that there was a hidden word in the remaining letters, something she’d never known.  She was surprised, but I don’t recall that she apologized to me.

As an adult, I’ve got a garage full of workworking tools, and feel very comfortable pulling out a saw and hacking off gigantic palm tree limbs, or building cat furniture.  I do not feel comfortable putting two inches of stitches in fabric using a sewing machine.  I’m sure I’ll get over that quickly, and look forward to learning, but it’s no thanks to that terrible teacher.  “Miss Cumming” (yes, that was her name, and we were too young to realize how mockable it was), wherever you are… it’s 28 years later, and I sure hope you’re not still terrifying young kids who don’t fit your rigid mold :p

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 10/09 at 07:45 PM
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