Announcing an Extended Break from Hand Sewing!

Although I tried to make the title of this post happy, it’s not.

About a week ago, while trying to finish costumes to be worn to the Renaissance Festival, I began to feel a lot of pain in my right hand. I was pushing myself really hard to get the costumes done in time for the Festival so I was working on my costumes about 8 hours a day, but I think it was longer than that. Because of all the work I was pouring into my Renaissance Festival costumes, I overworked my thumb muscles, causing the pain and a lot of swelling. Due to the pain, I didn’t get my costumes done in time to be worn to the festival and I spent the past week wearing a brace to immobilize my thumb so it can rest. Fortunately, I didn’t need to go to a doctor and after a week of not hand sewing, my thumb is feeling better.

After spending the week with my thumb in a brace, I decided that I’ll ease up on hand sewing and instead depend on my sewing machine to do the work for me. (That’s why I got the machine for anyway!) Unfortunately, I’m used to sewing many thing by hand such as zippers, pleats, and so on. If I’m going to depend on my machine to work for me, I’ll need to get better at sewing zippers, pleats, and so on by machine. In order to get better at sewing things by machine, I decided not to make anything for sale at my Etsy shop until I feel confident enough with my machine sewing and am satisfied with the quality that I want to sell it. I’m not sure how long it will take for this to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes at least two months for this to happen. (Probably longer depending on how busy I get at my normal day job)

Since I’m not sewing things for sale at Etsy, I plan on making personal sewing projects. My personal sewing projects, including costumes, dresses, skirts, jackets, and more, have built up because I wanted to make things to sell on Etsy. I have plenty of things to make and chances to practice sewing with a sewing machine. Thanks to a small break at my job, I’ve already begun to sew things for myself, though I have yet to talk about them online.

I’m not going to ignore my Etsy shop or stop selling things I make there, but I do need to get better at sewing with a machine in order to create new and better items for sale. I also need to save my hand for drawing. I can’t draw well with a swollen thumb!