Dear Internet, thank you for teaching me how to sew!

Or really, dear all you fantastic sewing bloggers out there - you have been and are such a big part in how I think about sewing, about clothes, and not least, how I now spend most of my free time. So I figured it was time to get over my sad technophobia and start my own blog, both to be a part of the fabulous international sewing community and maybe in some small way be able to give something back for all I've learned. I thought I'd use this - my first ever post on my first ever blog! - to tell you a bit about myself:


I live in Oslo, Norway, with my lovely husband and equally lovely teen son.  I have a job where I read, write and think a lot, and while I love that, I often feel the urge just to make something, that is something, and not just floats around out there. Enter sewing.


I have always been fond of making things, but through the years I've mostly knitted.
 This, for instance, is the first ever item I knitted - a rather fetching  scarf for my mother. We are talking late 1970s here, people, but I think my seven-year-old self deserves some props for the fashion forward pink and blue nod to the 80s.

I have sewn on and off for many years, but given my historical ratio of successful projects to sad potato sacks, I have often become disouraged. In the past I also found it difficult to become better - I don't really know anyone else who sews and had few places to turn to teach me.
 This changed about two years ago, when I started to think about sewing again. I became aware of the amazing  Internet resources dedicated to sewing. Never having been a big reader of blogs, I now found this fantastic army of people out there, with amazing skills, so willing to share genereously of their knowledge.


I wouldn't even know where to begin to list all the blogs that I scoured, but I will mention the amazing resource I found in the Artisan's Square forum at Stitcher's Guild. My sewing took a huge leap forward when I bought Claire Schaeffer's Couture Sewing Techniques, as it did when I started taking Craftsy sewing classes, especially Susan Khalje's couture dress class. I can't praise it enough.

 Looking at what I've sewn, there is clear dominance of dresses. I tend to look for patterns that I really like and then sew them several times, often tweaking them as I go.  I have an ambition to review my tried and tested patterns on PatternReview.com in time, so I'll try to blog them here as well.
 
Anyways, I look forward to recording my past, current and future sewing projects and being part of the great community of fellow sewing enthusiasts!