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How do you sew without a machine?

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A funny thing happened today. While in transit, I lost a button on my trousers. The only button that was holding my trousers up and from me being a major embarrassment in an airport!

Luckily, with the help of some fast thinking airline crew, I was able to save some dignity because they found some needle and thread that helped me sew the button back in a toilet and retain some dignity.

While I was hand sewing the button, I was thinking – has the art of hand sewing been lost these days? Do kids these days know that you can actually hand-sew?

Check out the gown pictured above. It was completely hand sewn. And why not! Sewing machines weren’t invented till the mid-19th century.

So how does one get started hand sewing? By not starting out with a gown like that of course :).

Start with these simple projects:

Martha Stewart’s hand sewing practice projects

Pruce’s hand sewing beginners projects

I am happy to state that my hand sewing skills that my mum taught me have kept me in good stead and the button that I sewed, stayed sewn till the end of the flight.

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Comments

  1. Yet another reason to make sure you always carry a small sewing kit! And especially some safety pins in several sizes, always, always handy things.

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Christmas Ornament Cross Stitch Patterns

The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.