While embarking on a complete sewing project can be thrilling initially, it presents too many challenges simultaneously for a novice. All the different aspects of garment construction come together at once, including selecting the fabric, cutting out accurately, determining a seam allowance, pressing, detailing, and ensuring a good fit. So if something doesn’t work out right in the finished piece, it might be really hard to figure out what specifically went wrong. This is why short exercises are so beneficial at the initial learning stages. Such drills narrow the scope to one skill and then give a person time to get to know that skill before needing to use it for a whole garment or household item. Rather than hoping that skills will emerge as you struggle through an arduous construction, you practice them in small, observable chunks in which you can make necessary adjustments.
A good drill starts with an objective. Pick one skill frequently encountered in sewing and work on it on its own. Straight seamlines work well because they teach precision, uniformity, and accuracy. Take a few pieces of plain cotton, draw sewing lines using a chalk marker or washable pen, then sew your lines while pressing each piece and comparing the first seam with the last. Then, repeat the exercise with a focus on using the seam guide rather than following the needle line. This exercise develops a different kind of focus. You can work on corners on another practice day by sewing around a box, stopping at each corner to pivot the fabric and checking to see if they stay square, as opposed to rounded or skewed.
You should also practice stitching curves because most beginning stitchers try to stitch them the same way as straight lines, which leads to puckers and odd shapes. Instead, try sketching a few shapes on scraps of cloth and stitching them, while relaxing your hands and steering the fabric around gradually. This is an area where most people tend to turn too late and then try to compensate with a sharp turn in the wrong direction. The answer is to slow down and make your turns more subtle until you begin to approach the curve. Then press the seam, since seams can look okay when laid flat, but press out their faults.
Even with just 15 minutes to dedicate to practice, it can be productive to structure your practice time around a goal. Spend the first few minutes preparing the sewing machine by threading it, setting up the needle and tension, and testing a stitch on a swatch. Most of the time should be dedicated to one kind of drill, be it sewing parallel lines, stitching perfect backtacks, or sewing two hem styles to the same fabric. Then, spend a few minutes inspecting what you’ve done. Find one thing that went well and one that didn’t work, save the test pieces in a file, and use them for future review.
Short drills are helpful, too, because feedback is more helpful when the question is more focused. Instead of being confused by an entire project, it’s possible to ask what caused that corner to shift, what caused that curve to bubble, or why the topstitching started to veer off in the other direction. Specific questions lead to specific answers. When your seam allowance starts becoming different in the middle of a row, there’s often something wrong with your body positioning or hand placement; when your stitches start bunching in the backtack, you may have to be sure to hold the starting threads as you make a few stitches. The smaller the piece of fabric you’re stitching, the quicker you can find what the problem was.
Once you feel like you’ve mastered a drill, link it with a task. Straight seams can be used for making a pouch. Curves can be used for pocket openings or facing pieces, while perfect corners can be applied to a napkin, tote or pillows. This matters because you are not practicing to practice; you’re practicing to get better at building things. The more often you can isolate a task, practice it, and then see the results, the more confident you will be when that task unexpectedly reappears on a project.