dirty little truths about sewing

Absolute Truths:

* The amount of time your child will spend wearing/playing with a finished project is inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend making it.

* Your bobbin thread will run out one inch from the end of your final seam. Always.

* Patterns that say “very easy” really mean “requires only 143 hours of sewing and sixteen swear words.”

* It is never cheaper to make it than to buy it. Ever.

* Sewing machine needles last exactly 7/8 as long as they are needed for your project. Then they break.

* Deciding that you don’t need to read the directions because you have made a specific project 13 times before is a direct road to pattern pieces sewn in backwards, ripping out seams, tears, and alcohol.

* When your sewing machine is wadding up copious amounts of thread underneath your work, and it seems obvious that the bobbin is the problem [because, after all, that’s on the bottom too], it never is. The top thread is always the problem, and if you would have learned from your past mistakes and rethreaded it when the problem began, you’d have saved 15 minutes of messing with tension and fixing the bobbin’s nonexistent problem. It Always Means You Need To Rethread the Machine. Duh.

* Ironing is boring and it sucks. The fact that every other instruction is always “Press” means that you have the choice of doing something really boring or having your work look…well…like you couldn’t be bothered to press. [I always opt for the latter–who cares?]

* You need 27 seam rippers because they migrate in pairs to the other end of the universe if you look away.

* Your machine may have 101 fancy stitches, but you’ll only ever use three of them.

* Fabric is so addictive that it should be a controlled substance.

Why doesn’t anyone tell you this stuff?