Earning my sewing badge?

My name is Jess. (Hi, Jess!) And I am craft-challenged. I don't exactly know when it set it... I used to be pretty creative and skillful. Now, I just kind of walk around craft stores with a glazed look in my eye. I never know where to start... I hope by telling my story I can overcome my obstacle to crafting and once again become the creative do-it-yourself-er that I know I can be!!! Ok, here goes...

Santa's gift to me this year was a sewing machine, and my mom even promised to help me learn to sew. I was to pick a project, something small-ish and useful, then we planned on buying fabric and notions and putting it all together. All I really wanted to do was edge blankets for the baby, but ok... a small project sounded fun. Just what I needed to overcome my deficiency. Something useful and cute and not TOO complex...enter the idea for the shopping cart/ high chair baby seat cover.

We went to JoAnn's today and purchased a good pattern (it's reversible and stuffs itself into a bag for easy portabliity!), picked out some cute, fun, fabrics and got all the notions together. We also found some basic sewing supplies (large matboard for measuring/cutting, good scissors, etc.) and I stocked up- one time start-up things, of course. Then, we headed home and assessed the situation.

Mom's been telling me since Christmas that the machine she bought was self threading. From what I could remember about the LAST time she tried to teach me to sew (17-ish years ago!!), threading the machine was the biggest pain in the you know what, so I was VERY excited to hear this. I'll take all the help I can get. As it turns out, self threading really means "thread it YOURSELF" This turned into problem 1, as I wanted to do it myself (my machine, I'll have to learn eventually, right?). Top threading turned out to be a piece of cake.

Then...the bobbin.

It seriously took us a good half hour and three instances of "Oh! I think I've... wait... nope." to get that darn bobbin threaded. The first time I tried and failed, I announced that the machine was broken, and I needed a new one. With a neverending bobbin, so I never have to change it. This statement was met with a LOOK, and eye roll, and I'm pretty sure a thought of "how can this craft-challenged girl be MY daughter? WHY GOD, WHY?!". She hid it well.

** I'm going to pause here and identify what the hell I'm talking about. Sewing machines have 2 spools of thread- one on top and one underneath. This helps the stitch "lock" and keeps the fabric together. The bottom thread is the dreaded bobbin that I've been complaining about. It's evil. That's all**

So, after getting the machine threaded and playing with various stitches, we discovered that my machine will sew on stretch fabric (which apparently is a good thing), and has a surging function, which my mother informed me would be necessary to sew blankets. What?! Really?! THAT MEANS I GET TO SEW BLANKETS! (Again, all I wanted to do. Squares are SIMPLE, people. SIMPLE. Baby steps.)

So, my mom leaves after a while, and gives me the assignment of washing, pinning and cutting out the fabric for the pattern... I've got the washing part down, but I managed to screw up the pinning/cutting out part. Something is desperately wrong with me- I can't understand pattern instructions and layouts at this point to save my life. My mom is coming back over tomorrow to re-pin my fabric and start supervising my project... how embarrassing.


Ma... Ma... Ma... Hey MA. Can you take my machine back and get me a cal-cu-latah instead?! I think I might be less craft challenged than I am math-challenged.