Stich 'n Bitch

Last year I came to the somewhat reluctant conclusion that I am not a talented seamstress. When I was a child, I loved to do cross-stich with my mother. I found creating little rows of colored stiches to be a relaxing, peacful thing to do. All of my adult life I also fantisied about one day making my own clothes or at least altering pieces myself. Last March I decided to finally learn how to use a sewing machine. I took a course at the Volkshochschule here in Berlin (like an Adult School) and realized quite soon that I was missing some key inherent skills to get me going: I cannot, and never could, fold things neatly and cannot draw a straight line to save my life. The teacher was often exasperated when I accidently sewed something onto the wrong side or bought the wrong kind of cloth for a project (some of this can be blamed on language misunderstandings. Although my German is fluent, there were certain sewing and cloth terms that I would probably not even know in English let alone a foreign language!) Of course, if I was very patient I was still able to get the job done but I found I didn't really enjoy it. Lack of pleasure, combined with the fact that the second-hand sewing machine I bought (literally!)blew up, caused me to draw the conclusion that sewing with a machine just wasn't for me. Being, in some ways, inherently 19th century, it makes sense that I still like to do it by hand. My newest project has been taking something else I love, vintage photos, and stitching parts of them where I would like to emphasise an angle or add color. I'm adding some pictures of two I have done recently. Probably they will find their way into some collage and then will continue on to my shop, Schaufenster. Time will tell....