I’ve found that even the smallest amount of structured practice can be incredibly beneficial for improving your sewing skills. One of the biggest issues that I see new sewists run into is that they sit down at their machine with a giant pile of fabric and notions and an expectation to create something. If they don’t have the skills to do so, that can be overwhelming and frustrating. Then they don’t sit down at their machine for another week or two, with the same expectations, and the same results. If you have a tiny bit of structured practice each day, or even each week, that can make a huge difference.
Simply choose a skill to focus on, and then repeat it often enough that your hands begin to recognize it. For example, practice sewing straight lines, or pressing seams, or cutting straight edges, or sewing on a simple waistband. Focus on that one thing for a few days, rather than trying to sew one thing one day and another thing the next. Sewing is a physical skill, and there is a rhythm to it. If you’re switching between skills every day, it’s hard to get into that rhythm. It’s hard to see improvement when yesterday was spent wrestling with a slippery fabric, today was spent tracing a pattern, and tomorrow will be spent putting a zipper in. But when you focus on the same thing for several days in a row, you can start to see that it’s getting easier. That you’re getting better.
I think there is sometimes a tendency to try to squeeze as much time as possible out of your practice sessions. If all you have is 15 minutes a day, you might be tempted to try to squeeze as much sewing into that 15 minutes as you can. Instead, I recommend spending the first few minutes of that time setting up for one specific task. If you want to practice sewing straight lines, then get out a couple pieces of scrap fabric, your thread snips, pins, and iron. Then sew two or three samples with one clear intention. Maybe you want to keep your seam allowance consistent. Maybe you want to make sure your lines are ending neatly. Leave a few minutes at the end to inspect what happened. Press your seams and turn them to the right side and see if your seam allowance was consistent. See if your ends were neat. If your lines were straight, if the fabric didn’t pucker, and if the edges still line up. (I always check both sides of the fabric, because sometimes you can have nice even stitches on the right side, but the fabric may be puckering on the wrong side).
If you only have 15 minutes a day, another temptation is to use that time to “work” on a project. To use that time to try to fix mistakes and finish something. I try to avoid that as much as possible. If I’m using my daily practice time to try to rescue an old project, then that time is being spent trouble shooting rather than practicing. When that happens, you might sit down to practice your hemming, then spend the whole session unpicking twisted stitching from something cut badly two weeks ago.
There’s nothing wrong with practicing your trouble shooting skills, but if you want to improve your sewing skills in general, I think it’s better to practice them separately. If you want to practice your topstitching, then practice topstitching a folded edge of scrap fabric. Once your stitches are straight and even and the correct distance apart, then it’s time to practice on an actual garment. Not only does this make it easier to track your improvement, but it makes the whole experience less frustrating.
I think the final temptation when it comes to creating a daily practice routine is to make it too perfect. If you miss a day, it can be tempting to think that you’ve failed and that the whole thing is a waste of time. But that’s not true. Sometimes life gets in the way, and you just can’t sew for a day or two. That’s okay! Just climb back on the wagon. If you’re too tired to sew, then spend your daily practice time pressing the seams you sewed yesterday, and evaluating how much of a difference it makes. If you’re too busy, then spend your time threading your machine and cutting out pieces and marking your seams for the next day. Any amount of time spent is better than none at all.
As you settle into a routine, don’t forget to allow for feedback. This doesn’t have to mean showing every single thing you make to another person. You can get feedback simply by comparing this week’s seam to last week’s and noticing if there are fewer wrinkles in it. You can get feedback by realizing that the corners look nicer when you slow down and pivot. Sewing responds to attention, and if you give it even a tiny bit of attention every day, it will start to show. And eventually, those gestures that feel so awkward now will start to feel like second nature.