In my ongoing quest to find my inner Martha, I acquired as a Christmas gift this year a nice entry-level sewing machine.
Here's the problem. The only person I know who sews? My mother. I love her, but her teaching me things tends to reduce me to a bratty teen.  I still don't like to think about what went down when she tried to teach me to drive a stick shift. Un-pret-TAY.

I took a sewing class a few years back, and have a couple nice, remedial-but-hip kind of books that don’t assume you’ve been doing this stuff since home ec (which I did not take).  But being a blog addict, I needed more.

Too many sewing sites are either, um, a little retro, or they are done by high-end sewers who seems  to have no idea this doesn't come super easy to a lot of us, nor do we novices want to spend $45/yard on fabric we're likely to screw up.

But I've found a few that are inspiring, cleverly written, or beautifully designed, and often all three.

Stitch Lounge is the online outlet for a sewing lounge in San Fransisco —a place where people can come, work on projects together, and use the kind of tool they might not want to carve out a space for in their small city apartments. This is a brilliant idea and I wish there was such a thing in my city. Add cocktails and/or coffee  and childcare and I might move in.

Also proffering tutorials is Sew, Mama, Sew, on things like fitting patterns, and how to assess your learning style to make patterns easier to figure out.

Finally, A Dress A Day. I am such a sucker for dresses, and while most of Erin's dresses are way beyond my skill level, a girl can dream.

Now to find time to finish that dishtowel project….

Image: A Dress A Day