Sewing with Nancy

I am a crafter. I fell in love with making things by hand when I was five years old. I remember receiving an embroidery kit with a little printed fabric, a hoop, threads, and a needle. I don’t remember who gave it to me or if I ever finished it but I remember working on it. I loved the thought of creating something by hand. It seemed so much more important than something I could buy at the store. I haven’t changed much in that respect. I still like to craft and create. It is my therapy. I am always looking to try new things and learn new crafts.
“So, what does that have to do with Sewing with Nancy?” you ask. Well, for all my want-to, I didn’t know how to sew. I tried and even took a sewing class in school. I just loved it but after that class ended I was on my own. My mother didn’t sew, she didn’t even know how to run a sewing machine. Good eye for fashion but not a crafter. My grandma knew how but she liked to crochet more so she taught me that. Still left me in the dark about sewing. I could read a book but for some reason the knowledge wouldn’t cross over to my hands. I could sew a straight seam (pretty much), and insert elastic but not a lot more. That is, until I found Nancy Zieman on PBS and her show, Sewing with Nancy. She took the mystery out of zipper insertions, buttonholes, and facings. All of a sudden I could finish a project and it looked good. I was making skirts, blouses, jeans, everything, and they didn’t look homemade. They looked good. I was so proud.
Nancy Zieman is the TV host of Sewing with Nancy, a half-hour TV show on PBS. The show has been on the air since 1982 and is the longest running sewing program on North American television. She creates patterns for the McCall’s Pattern Company like this one here.

McCall’s 2879 Easy Knit Wardrobe, sizes 8-22
She has a columns in sewing magazines. She doesn’t just show how to sew, she makes sewing make sense. She is a sewing queen with a needle in one hand and thread in the other, her throne is the chair in front of her sewing machine. Hail Nancy! Long may you reign!
I don’t sew much anymore. I bought a sewing machine that was supposed to do everything but pick out the fabric and it was a lemon. That darned machine spent more time in the shop than in my home. I finally sold it on EBay a long time ago just to get it away from me. It was that or it was going to be an anchor on one of the hubby’s boats. Since then I bought a cheap machine at Wally World, good enough to do what I want, which isn’t much anymore. Cost less than 1/30 of the other, still runs, and never spent a day in the shop (Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. I might have jinxed myself). The lemon took the zeal out of my sewing passion (I should have said peel. lol, sorry, couldn’t help it).
I still have a bit of the sewing passion in me, though, especially when I see sewing patterns and fabric. I guess that’s evident when you look at my Etsy and Artfire shops with lots of vintage pattern and fabric listings. I don’t know much about sewing, at least compared to others, but I thank Nancy for what I do know. I can sew a zipper in 15 minutes or less and I can make it look good. Thank you, Nancy.

Post by Eileen Patterson of GoofingOff.etsy.com and GoofingOff.Artfire.com