My First Sewing Class: C'est Bon!

On Friday 13th March, 2015 something very big and very fun happened... and you might have noticed a little ripple in your day too, wherever you live in the world... because all the world's in all the universes aligned up and:

I went to my first ever sewing class in my first ever sewing school! SEWING SCHOOL.

Perhaps, you didn't know but I've NEVER had any sewing tuition... My 'sewing career' began after I moved back to my hometown for my first job at a radio station... and because of my breakfast radio hours... I found myself with oodles of op shopping/thrifting time in the afternoon and collected up great vintage patterns, and fabric (mostly bedsheets with crazy 1960s flowers) and taught myself to sew. It was 2001-2002. Of course, I challenged myself to sew more through various projects... and now....

I have been sewing the same way (but having read ALL the sewing blogs & with a few extra online tutorials showing me bias binding and other ideas) ever since... using shortcuts perhaps that same time but not really knowing a whole lot behind why we do some things...

NOW, however, that I'm having a 'new' look at my sewing life living in Shanghai, I want to get BETTER. And mostly, I want better techniques, so that my clothes last & feel good, but also with the hope that I can draft my own patterns for myself in the future.

So I thought, I should finally take some classes. It's been almost 15 years of self taught sewing! After a bit of googling (or bing-ing & baidu-ing - we are in China after all!) I found COUTURE NOMAD, my new sewing school!

So I packed my bag with the 'good' scissors (from Shanghai's famous knife & scissor shop, I'll let you know about soon) and fabric (cotton, with an obvious 'right' and 'wrong' side!) and some threads and caught a taxi to Muriel's house in Shanghai! My new sewing teacher! I was so excited to meet her, and my fellow classmates, and we all chatted about what we loved about sewing and our backgrounds and for three hours, Muriel showed me all the various seams and hems.

The only photo I took:

Just before I basted around the cardboard template, and pulled the shape of the pocket and topstitched it to my test fabric. I've sewn pockets before, but usually just iron them flat (and without the smooth rounded edges you get with the baste/template)...

SO! I was just so very happy! Meeting my fellow 'nomadettes' and my lovely teacher, I felt very proud of the sewing and creating that I've done already... but feel very happy & excited about some new discipline and maths and sewing for the future.

The most amazing thing though: Everyone speaks French or is French. Teacher Muriel has lived in China for almost 10 years, but is French like a lot of expats in Shanghai ... and I cannot tell you how utterly delightful it was to sit around each sewing, at our own pace, through the techniques and hearing "C'est Bon" repeated around me. It IS good! It's all good. No wonder I didn't go to sewing school before, I had to wait for the universes & worlds to align and meet up for us all to sit around together.

SEW happy! SEW GOOD! I feel very lucky & full of the serendipity.

I wish you a lovely week and can't wait to share more about my Sewing School Slash French Lesson!

Best,
xoxo