Completed: 05/24/2014
Selection of pants sewed mainly by Jack's mom, with some of my efforts
Flashback to Home Economics class in intermediate: one of our projects in that class was to sew ourselves a pillow. I chose a cute snowman design. I wasn't have my own sewing machine, so I remember the hours tolled on stitching the entire thing by hand. Although I consider myself nowhere near a pro, I did enjoy being able to create something with my hands. I would then go on to create felt pillows as gifts for people, including perhaps the only gift that I've given to my mother that she's ever kept.
Mom even put my gift a Ziploc bag to preserve it
Translation: Parents, always in my heart (I know, kind of sappy)
As nice as these pillows were for decor, they were not very practical. When I was creating my bucket list, I decided that I would try my hand at sewing something more pragmatic. At one point, I bought a yard of some cute cloth thinking that I would fashion a nice pair of sleeping shorts for myself. But little did I know that my sewing needs would be required to fulfill another item on my bucket list. For my volunteer trip to Hong Kong, I decided to make myself some comfortable long pants since I would be working outdoors. With the cloth that Jack's sister provided and much assistance and patience from Jack's mom (the cute cloth I initially bought wasn't long enough for pants, but the selection of cloth at hand included some designs that matched my personality), I was able to sew a pair of pants. I ended up with 5 pairs (three for me to take with me on my trip and two for my mother, since she enjoyed the style of pants that I made). Only one is a true product of my efforts; the rest required much correction or doing by Jack's mom due to time constraints and the difficulty for my beginner status with a sewing machine.
Drawing outline of my pants to cut out
First, I took apart a pair of old pants that would be used as the template after some modification to fit my current body shape. After cutting out the cloths for the frontside and backside of the pants as well as two pockets, I did some sewing on the machine. I really need to thank Jack's mom for bearing with all my mistakes and slowness with the machine. It required so much patience and understanding from her to deal with teaching me how to sew. Even with lines penciled in to guide my sewing, I managed to veer off from those lines and had to redo much of the sewing.
First time at a sewing machine (look at that concentration!)
In the end, the one pair that I managed to sew with my own hands was for my mother (the rightmost pair). She commented on how I accidentally sewed on the elastic band at the waist so it was forever twisted. Whoops. It was not an easy process, but I managed to do it!
The only pair I can say I did entirely by my own hands
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