An Attempt at Sewing

On this lazy Saturday I decided to make some potpourri pouches. I've been wanting to make these for a while. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to do with them yet. I was thinking I would put them in my underwear drawer but I'm not totally sure if I want my underwear smelling like potpourri. I got a little help and inspiration from Craftstylish. They turned out..... well lets just be happy with the fact that they turned out. I'm still new to the sewing thing and I sometimes like to take shortcuts where you can't. My friend P inspired me to begin sewing. She makes it look effortless and I thought psh I can do that! That is so easy. I can whip out a shirt a shirt in a couple hours just like her! How hard can it be?

Ha! (yes that is me laughing at how ridiculous I sound.)

Let me tell you, I thought I would start out easy by making an apron.

Ha! I didn't even know how to read the pattern let alone where to start.

P so kindly helped me through that one and let me make my mistakes so I would learn. In the end it turned out fairly well. So keeping my limited sewing abilities and stubbornness to reading directions in mind this is what I created!

Here is what I used:

Here's my beautiful Singer sewing machine my parents bought me for Christmas. I love it and it's so easy to use! It even comes with a video on how to use it. I've watched it like 4 times..... Everything looks so easy until I attempt it. I don't know what that's about.

Pins! Over 100 things to stab myself with!

                     

My fabric! It's just some scraps I had along with a shirt I cut that had holes in it. I absolutely loved this shirt. It's the brown floral fabric. When I cut it up there were way more holes than I thought there were. Whoops! Hopefully no one noticed when I wore it.

What I did!

So I sewed together two fabrics with french seam. I know! Look at me getting all fancy with my technical sewing terms. Shh I wasn't the one to tell you that's the only seam name I know.

                 Then I cut out a heart out of some scrap paper I had and pinned it to both the top fabric and the back fabirc. I also had to lay another piece of fabric behind the brown fabric because it was too thin.

I then attempted to sew around, not on, the paper heart making sure to leave a hole to put the filling in. I was somewhat successful. It's a little lopsided but hey, at least it's heart shape!

Here I tried to get all artistic with my picture.......I decided to put a border on it to give it a "finished" look with biased tape (technical term!!). Although this picture looks like I'm doing an awesome job don't be fooled. Right after I took this picture I ran right off my border and had to take it all out and do it again. And again. At first I didn't want to take the time to pin it down but of course it took me 10 times longer fixing my mistakes than if I were to just pin it down the first time. One day I will learn.

.....Maybe.

The filling!

   Sage

                                   

Rosemary

Lavender

All things I grow in my backyard!

I combined it with rice just like CraftStylish said. I'm not sure if the rice is a filler or to prevent mold or both but I liked the idea of it so I did it. I just used enough rice to fill my heart. I didn't really measure. 

What can I say, I'm just not the measuring type. 

Putting the filling in was comical. Of course the hole I left was way too small and I tried to pour it in. That definitely didn't work so then I made a funnel out of paper and that helped but kept getting clogged by the herbs.Then I got smart..... 

I stuffed the herbs in first then funneled in the rice. Ah! Now we're think'n!

Then I sewed it up! And any mistakes you see are not mistakes. We will just call those artistic rights. I won't show you the back cause it's not pretty but who looks at the back anyways?....

I made a couple more but didn't put as much effort into them. I kinda like the frayed edges though. Hope this inspires you to try your hand at sewing!

Now I have a big mess to clean up because I can't do anything without making a mess.

But I like the idea that if you didn't make a mess you didn't have fun!