To Sew is Divine....

So, I sew now. I took a sewing class last Fall and found that I really do enjoy the power of creating (or altering) things! All my life, I put off sewing! That was because when I was a teenager I sewed a dress with my mom's help. And it took a lot of work to get something to even look slightly like you want the picture to. (mom did all the hard parts and saved it so I could at least wear it) But it was a hard experience and I knew that it would take hours and hours and hours to get it right. And I just wasn't into it...

To my mother's chagrin (she's a fantastic seamstress!! and my little sister followed in her footsteps, so now SHE'S the favorite daughter), I quit my very early sewing career and never looked back.

But alas, throughout my life I have had things that needed to be altered or enhanced (adding a pocket to a skirt). I would send it to my sister to do for me - in LA. But the crazy thing was she was really busy and couldn't always get to it - something about working 14 hours a day or something. And then when she did have a few hours to herself, she would finish it and then have to mail it back to me. It just wasn't practical.

Because of this, I decided to bite the bullet and take a sewing class from Salt Lake Community College. I roped my friend Sarah into it and we attended as many classes as my crazy, RS pres schedule would allow. And you know, it wasn't all that bad!

Our teaching insisted that we not have any zippers or bias used in the project. I was ok with it, because zippers scare me and I didn't even know what bias tape was. My project was an apron (the pattern was from "Sewing For Dummies"). I got it started but the class was over before I could finish it. And it's been sitting on a shelf low these many months because I didn't have the time to finish it. But now that I'm free from being RS pres, I'm sewing up a storm! With my new sewing machine that I got for Christmas/Birthday from Sarah and Dona, I've blind stitched 2 pairs of pants, fixed the hem of a skirt, shortened a REALLY long shirt, and fixed another shirt! I'm a SEWING MANIAC!

So now I'm back to the apron. But alas! I'm trying to top stitch and something terribly wrong keeps happening. And this didn't happen while I was in class! The stitch looks grand on top but underneath is a looped-de-lou nightmare!! I've turned the tension from 3 to 4 hoping it would help, but it didn't? So now I plea to the sewers of the world!! Please save me!!!

What am I doing wrong???

Picture #1: Top view (isn't it beautiful??)
Picture #2: Bottom view (nasty!!)