Genius Hour 1.2

     As I said last week, I got a little farther than where I planned to be. As of this week, I am still a little farther than planned. I had planned to practice the stitching this week, but since I started that last week, I didn’t have much else to do. Because of this, I decided to hand sew my first piece of clothing. I was nervous to mess it up, but once I got started, it became more comfortable and kind of fun. There are still some things I need to work on, but I am content with how it turned out. I can be too hard on myself sometimes, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll get better with time, so I just need to keep perfecting it. For the next few week I plan on fixing more clothing, and maybe trying to hem something. This first repair wasn’t very difficult, so we will see how this following week will go.

This is what the tear looked like. It was on the inner seam of the thigh pant leg.

This is what the sew looked like one the outside of the pants after I was finished. It blended in with the seam fairly well and the stitch seemed to be strong.

Genius Hour 1.1

     The first week of Genius Hour has come to an end. During class for Genius Hour, I did some research on the basic types of hand stitches that are used for repairing clothes. I found that most of the stitchings are continuations of one basic stitch. Outside of class, I watched videos on how the stitching is done. I am already ahead of where I planned to be. I had only planned to do research, but it seemed to take less time than I had thought. So, I decided to start what I had planned for the next week. I started practicing one of the stitching techniques. It wasn’t one that I had researched, my grandma showed me the stitch that she uses for most things. I also learned how to sew on a button. Catching on to the actual hand stitching wasn’t as hard as I had expected. The hardest thing for me was learning an efficient way to tie the knot in the thread so it doesn’t fall through the material. The stitch looked pretty good for my first one, but I need to work on having less thread show where I had stitched. With having practiced some of the stitching this week, I will have more time to get the hang of this stitch and the other stitchings before I begin attempting to hand stitch actual clothing. This week was full of managing time and planning things out so I could work on this project. Genius Hour is unlike anything I have had to do for school, but I think it will be a good learning experience.

This is what the stitch would look like on the hidden side. I used different color thread so I could see how it looked easier.

This is what the visible side of the stitch would look like. The thread would normally match the fabric, but as you can see, I need to be more consistent with how much fabric I grab with the needle. This is also the button I sewed on.