Stitching Together Confidence at the Drawstring Bags Maker Workshop

In an impulsive decision during a somewhat slow shift, I decided to revisit an old passion of mine: sewing.

Over the past few months, I have started to alter my clothes through very unskilled, tangled, and snarled hand-stitching with a standard sewing kit from Target. But that wasn’t always the case.

In grade school, my grandmother was the first person to show me how to use a sewing machine and eventually bought me my own. The first item I ever sewed on a machine was a pillowcase made out of bandanas, one side was hot pink in a classic paisley print and the other was a lime green and black zebra print. After sewing many pillowcases, I eventually evolved into making small pouches with zippers and other small, simple projects, but sadly stopped there.

A friend reached out to me the morning of last month’s Intro to Sewing - Drawstring Bags Maker Workshop letting me know she was planning on attending. I took this as a sign to startup sewing again!

At the workshop, I was given a grayish, olive-colored piece of fabric that felt very sturdy and an overview of basic steps for the project. Our Director of Lab and Equipment Operations, Neil Pearse, was a wonderful guide throughout the workshop.

I was directed by Neil to make four markings on my piece of fabric with white chalk as a guide to sew the openings for the string handles of the bag. After this, I was ready to head to the sewing machine and get started.

Before I could start, I ran into my first major hiccup: threading the bobbin. I always struggled to do this and this project was a harsh reminder of that. Nonetheless, I put on my big girl pants and began to thread my bubblegum pink thread through the bobbin. With some additional help from Neil, I successfully threaded the rest of the machine and it was finally time to actually sew.

During this project, I realized some aspects of sewing returned to me in muscle memory, such as adjusting the height of the needle. But other very basic things–like simply remembering to put the presser foot down before pedalling–absolutely flew out of my head. So when I began to actually sew, without the presser foot, it was disastrous. It was so bad, I completely tangled the thread on my fabric into a huge wad of pink thread and had to completely restart. This time, I knew better.

With my fresh piece of fabric and part of my dignity stripped, I returned to the machine. I stayed diligent this time; I carefully went through each step before I began to pedal. When I did, it was smooth sailing…until my bobbin thread ran out in the middle of a stitch.

I was once again faced with rethreading the bobbin, delaying myself even more. During this time, my friend was already on the last step of her drawstring bag so I began to feel even more rushed and flustered. I began to sew again, quickly but cautiously. I had made my final stitch (or so I thought) and headed over to Neil to begin looping the string into the bag.

Neil began to analyze my work and quickly realized I stitched one part of the bag wrong, making it incredibly difficult to add the string. I gave up after hearing this news. I thanked Neil for his guidance and the supplies, and kindly added I would not finish the project because I already felt so behind and everyone was waiting on me. With all of my hiccups, I just wanted to be done!

But, in one last glimmer of hope, Neil told me I would only have to remove and restitch one part of my work. For a split second, I still contemplated giving up. I quickly snapped out of this mindset because the whole reason I came was to challenge myself, and I had come too far to stop now.

I pedaled my way through a final set of stitches. The adjustments I made were enough to finish the project, and finally I was ready to turn this pouch into a drawstring!

There were a few colors of yarn to choose from, and I chose a lavender shade to compliment my pink stitching. I was instructed to take the yarn and attach a paper clip to the end of it as a guide to loop the string through the bag. In order to make the drawstring mechanism work, we had to loop two long pieces of yarn in opposite directions throughout the top trim of the bag.

Unsurprisingly, this took me a very long time to do. I pulled out and re-looped the same piece of yarn at least four times before it worked. Finally, I was done.

Despite bumps in the road, I felt extremely accomplished and proud of my work. I feel a huge reason for this was the warm environment of The Shop. When there were obvious times I wanted to quit, I had a friend and wonderful SCD staff to cheer me on simply by telling me these mistakes were okay and easily fixable. If I tried to reteach myself sewing alone, I think my own negativity would’ve gotten the best of me, robbing me of rekindling this love!

I am so grateful to have experienced the amazing resources SCD has to offer. I’m excited to challenge myself in our next Video Podcasting workshop with the Media Studio!

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