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Welcome to the Designers Plants and Coffee podcast, where we're sewing, sipping, and staying rooted.

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We're three creative women building handmade businesses and sharing real conversations about

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design, growth, and what it really takes to make things that matter.

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So grab your coffee, pull up a project, and let's grow together.

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We're going to talk about the most interesting and funniest things we've heard or seen as educators

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or, you know, teaching beginner sewers how to sew.

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And, you know, just the nuances of learning a new craft.

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You can take it away. Naima, you first.

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I think the funniest for me is comparing, like, my kids to adult and seeing some of the same things that we. That they do.

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One of the funniest stories I have actually is not even from a kid, and I'm not gonna say any

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name because I know she watches the podcast, but we were teaching at summer camp, and we had

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this thing on Thursdays where if the kids weren't finished their projects, we would be sewing

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fairies and kind of help their projects along.

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And my co teacher sewed the pants for this student, but she sewed it wrong.

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So we were like, we're all tired. We're gonna go home. She won't notice, right?

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That baby came in that classroom the next day and said, what happened to my pants?

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And so to this day, every time we see each other, we joke about that story about what happened to the pants.

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So that's my starter story to say that it's not just students that it happens to.

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Sometimes educators have that problem too.

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That's one really good one that shows that it's not just the. That makes mistakes.

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Tish.

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So when I'm teaching sewing, I introduce the iron and giving someone who has never ironed before.

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In a couple of the classes, there was one of the early factory irons with the steam, and it

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has the stuff at the bottom.

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So telling them this is how this iron works, and they're looking at you like, well, why is the steam coming up?

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Because it's the water coming down into the iron.

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Wait, okay, these are college students or these are adults?

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These were college students, and they have.

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Never ironed anything before.

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Never ironed anything. So I'm introducing them into ironing.

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And might I say, it's not just college students.

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I teach adults who do not iron.

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I've had several of my adult students say, oh, my God, because of this class, I went and bought an iron.

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Wait, they didn't even own an iron.

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A lot of them do steam, though.

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A lot of them Steam.

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But I tell them you can't sew without an iron.

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You might as well just be sewing Barbie clothes by hand if you don't use an iron.

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And I tell them all the time, if you have to ask, the answer is yes, iron it. Iron everything.

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Our class slogan is the difference between handcrafted and homemade Is your iron.

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Yes. I mean, that is half. It's half the battle.

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Because you can fix a lot of stakes with a good iron, a good press.

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I don't even like to say iron.

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I like to say pressing.

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Because ironing and pressing are two different things.

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See, ironing, you're trying to get the wrinkles out.

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Pressing is you pressing seams.

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You're putting pressure on the seam to.

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Make it flat and making it permanent.

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You know, once you, once you press it, you're making that seem permanent.

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Yes, yes. And you want it to lay flat.

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So ironing is just getting the wrinkles out.

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And you can do the same thing with steam.

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It was really mind boggling to hear this student say, well, well, my parents or someone else

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were ironed for them or they just would not.

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I don't know if it's a generation thing, honestly, because my daughters, they don't like to

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iron either, but they know how to.

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I mean, who am I to let them walk out with wrinkled stuff and.

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Then even introducing them to.

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Okay, so this is the tailor's ham.

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This is two sides of it.

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Okay, For Letitia, for the people in the audience that don't know what a tailor's hammer is, please explain.

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You need a tailor's ham because it's just stuffed and one side is with cotton and the other side is wool.

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You use it to flatten out seams.

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Let's say a curved seam, a princess seam.

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You can use your tailorless ham to help you iron it.

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But introducing that, their students were just completely mind blown between that and also having to explain.

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So this is a tape measure and a, a quarter an inch of what that looks like, and breaking it

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down to decimals and breaking it down to think of it as a dollar, one inch is a dollar.

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But really having to tell them, yeah, remember all of that math that you didn't think you need, you need.

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I tell them sewing is geometry.

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I've seen people sew one side on a quarter inch and one side on a half inch, and one side at

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the top is a quarter and the bottom is a half.

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And it's like, how are you going to wear that?

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Somebody said to me today something about Gordon Gartrell if you know, you know, it's funny

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when you see it in that sitcom, but it really happens, like, every day.

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This whole discussion came about because I was telling you guys about one of my students.

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You know, I teach that. I teach beginner. Beginner.

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So I'm teaching them how to read a pattern and what's on each piece. And she was. She did it right.

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She was looking at the layout and looking at her piece, but she decided that a piece of her

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short should be cut on the fold. And that's it.

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How are you gonna say this?

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She was so frustrated, and she couldn't figure it out, you know, And I only get them once a week.

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So she was like, I'm just not gonna touch it until Tuesday.

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So once I explained it, it was better.

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But it's something as simple explaining what the selvage and what the fold is.

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It's just because it comes so naturally.

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Well, not naturally, but it comes from years of doing it for us.

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It's so interesting to see when the light bulb comes on when you're teaching.

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The fold is where you fold the fabric in half, either on a long side or the short side. And the selvage.

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And the selvage is the edge of the fabric.

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The end of the fabric.

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And can you explain that?

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There are three selvedge edges.

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There's a top, bottom, and side.

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If you want to sew your pant on the fold, that means that you have no hips.

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It's just going to go straight down.

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And you want to sew the front and the back.

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You can't really do that because the crotch in the back and the crotch in the front is different.

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I also had somebody sew front crotch to the back crotch, which was kind of hilarious because

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they were like, well, why is it so big?

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And I tell them all the time, you have to mark your pieces, you have to mark your notches, you

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have to mark your circles.

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All of those things make sense when you are putting something together.

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But do they listen to me? No.

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And then they sew their back to their front.

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I remember since you told a story about students not doing notches, you care to share that one?

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In a class, I. We had someone come in to be the factory, and I told her, look at the tech packs. Here are the patterns.

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I want you to sew it. Here's the fabric.

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She met with them, discussed everything.

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I said, I want you to make the garment following their pattern.

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If there's no notch, then there's no knot.

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They're going to learn their Lesson stuff will come back in pieces. Literally.

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Like, well, why didn't she put the waistband or puts the pant leg to the pocket or to the other pant leg?

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Do you have a notch?

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Is there a notch there?

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And I go over and I look and they're looking. They're like, no.

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And I'm like, well, how she supposed to know that?

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You sent her your tech pack and you sent her your pattern and you gave her fabric.

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You literally wasted a whole day and you paid.

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Yeah, you wasting time and money without having the proper indicators on your pattern.

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They come to me all the time and wonder why it's not working.

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I'm like, where are your notches? I don't know. What's the front? I don't know. What's the back?

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I don't know which piece goes where.

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If you don't even put your circles.

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Put your notches, we need.

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They are your puzzle piece.

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You cannot put your pattern together without it.

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But they learn the hard way.

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Then they come and everything is big.

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And then even with teaching someone pattern making, I tell them I want a mechanical pencil.

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Do not use a regular number two pencil.

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So this is mechanical pencil.

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See how lovely this is?

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Here's your number two pencil.

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And this is the point.

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See the difference, the width of it? This is 13.

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This a quarter of an inch.

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You can have 16 lines in it.

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And now you've added over two inches on something.

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They're like, why is it big? Well, let's see.

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You use the mechanical pencil and you should have used.

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Well, you use a regular pencil.

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You should have used the mechanical one.

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You made sure you made your pattern wider because your lines are so thick, you went to the outer edge that's adding measurements.

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So think of it as a quarter plus a quarter plus a quarter plus a Quarter plus times 16.

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When you have to stop and sharpen that pencil, it.

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It changes the width of the pencil every time you have to sharpen it.

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But, you know, they, they waste a lot of time and energy.

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That's exactly why math matters.

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I just had somebody ask me, what does 3/4 to 5,8 of an inch of a yard mean?

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What does it mean?

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Yeah, because their fabric, their fabric measurements was bring 3/4 to 58 of a yard of fabric

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to class on the first day.

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Now this is, this is not beginner. Beginner. So.

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Well, I don't know what that means.

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You know, I have a fraction to decimal chart that I think I'm going to include in the, in a download.

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So, you know, look in the Description just so that you have it.

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It's interesting having to explain and explain and then kind of break it down to.

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This is why I'm telling you this, because later on it's going to come up, hey, you know you

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wanted to do that princess seam dress.

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Well, it said 58 of an inch for the seam allowance.

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You did a quarter.

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And I mean, it's not only bigger, it doesn't fit correctly because you did not sew all of the seam allowance.

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So the seams won't match up properly.

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That's where the notches come in.

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So you have to line up the notches and the seam allowance doesn't add up.

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So you really have to.

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I mean, I know, Naomi, you said that in the beginning, teaching people how to read patterns.

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I mean, on the pattern, it says what the seam allowance is.

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The funniest was in teaching somebody how to read a pattern.

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Now she was cutting out some piece that needed to be cut on the fold.

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And she said, well, why can't I just cut it into two and sew it together?

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And I said, because it's going to change the shape.

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But I mean, even if I add an inch, I said, how do you know it's an inch?

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And she said, well, I just.

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I just think I can do it that way.

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And I said, godspeed, you do it however you see fit.

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And she came back the next week and she asked me again, I just don't understand why I can't cut two of them.

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I said, my answer is not going to change because you want to save a scrap of fabric. She cut it.

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She did not cut it on the fold, and it didn't fit.

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And she didn't come back to class after that. Really. She quit.

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You know, I just want to say something just because, I mean, we're going over this.

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This is all in fun, right? Don't quit. Keep trying.

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I mean, listen, all of us make mistakes.

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You know, sometimes you sold the wrong piece of the wrong. It's.

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All of us have done it.

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You know, we like to be transparent on this show.

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I was making something the other day. It was late. I was tired.

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When I looked at what I did the next, I had sewn on, it was three different things.

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I had sewn every single one of them wrong side to right side three times in a row.

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And I was like, this is why you don't sew when you're tired.

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All the years of experience we have, we still make these silly little mistakes.

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We still all carry a seam ripper everywhere we go.

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You know, this is the first thing that I tell the students.

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Open your your your your supplies.

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Your seam ripper is your best friend.

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So that's it for us.

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I'm going to have the fraction of the decimal download underneath this video and in the show notes.

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If you want to download that, I am Zahia from Coverme Chic along with.

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Leticia of keeping you in stitches.

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Fearless threads.

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We'll see you next time.

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Thanks for hanging out with us on the Desiders Plants and Coffee podcast.

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If you love this episode, please leave a review, share it with your creative friend, or tag us on Instagram.

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Until next time, keep dreaming big and growing slow.