So as promised, some feed back on the course. (I suppose it should be in the review section really).
There are only 6 places on the course and no real surprise to find out I was the only man on there. But there were also two no-shows, which was a shame, (the indoor Cheif of Staff said shed have gone if she'd known). The lady who took us (Bryony), explained she'd sewn all her life and come back to sewing via a mundane job elsewhere, she'd also done her degree in materiel design. (Nadine the owner also did a degree in Fashion/clothing - doing her dissertation on the development of military uniforms, turns out her dad was a Woofer!)
The course was for real non-sewers and took you through all the basics, starting with the machine (which was a Janome DXL 603 and was the Starship Enterprise compared with my machine) we were taken through winding and loading spools, threading, feet and feeders, a bit on tension and the controls of the machine, like speed and patterns. Some good tips to be had such as using the little aperture on the foot to start the sewing or marking the plate with tape if you needed to.
We then got sewing and we told about length and width, then given some Calico to get the feel, turn corners and a little bit of a play to build a bit of confidence, it also helped us get into the right position and used to the foot pedal. Next we moved onto some simple seams. Just a plain seam but then also showing how to pin and then press the seam and stitching afterwards, then a bit of a chat about seam allowances and how to stop fraying by using the machine's own 'overlocker'. After this we moved onto French seams and blind hems, which was good and interesting. Hemming was also useful to see how much the thread poked through so adjusting the width and length gave different finishes. They also gave us a go on the real overlocker before trying some hemming. It wasn't as violent as the industrial one I tried at Bicester Depot a few years back.
We tied it all together by making a stand-alone pocket like you get on jeans. It was worse than playing chess, thinking about 6 steps ahead. It also got us using the aiming marks on the plate for sewing a curve, which I didn't realise were there! The last bit of the course was using the button hole settings, but as this machine was digital, it meant you just pushed a button and it did the rest (button in the foot and an automatic stop) so I'll have to practice them manually.
I forget where and when we changed feet, but we did changed through several of them and I may have the order of events slightly out of kilter, but we covered a lot. I was mentally pretty tired as there was a lot of concentration and self induced pressure to get perfect seams etc was huge,
. All through the day there was much small talk about heavy and light materials and what experiences we had or what we wanted to do next etc
Overall it was a great day, relaxed atmosphere, tea and coffee on hand, and I'd thoroughly recommend you do a basic course at your local centre. We all got some hand outs (like on types of needle) and a folder to store our samples in. I'm certainly going to book the Day 2 course, but there's no space till Apr.
http://www.yorkschoolofsewing.co.uk/
