I’m relatively new to sewing since my Mom gave me her serger machine. I had also tried to use my mother-in-law’s sewing machine and sewing in a straight line is not as simple as it looks. It’s like cutting a piece of plywood with a table saw except the plywood isn’t stiff and seems to have a mind of its own.
I went onto the LA Public Library’s e-media page to see if I could find a Kindle book that teaches the basics of sewing. There’s actually a lot of books up there that could be useful, but most of them seem to be for medium to advanced beginners if you know what I mean. Most of the books use sewing lingo that I’m not quite ready for. I found one called Sewing In A Straight Line and thought that this is for me. I wanted to do the most basic things, including sewing in a straight line. When I go to the description for the book, it starts out with, “Absolutely anyone can sew in a straight line.” Oh well.
I found the Handmade Harbor blog that explains how to sew in a straight line pretty well. It basically says to guide the edge of the fabric with the guidelines on the machine base. It reminds me of bowling. When you’re bowling, you don’t aim at the pins, but you aim at the arrows nearest you to make it easier to hit your target.
The next step for me: How in the heck do you cut fabric in a straight line so that guiding the fabric in a straight line actually is useful?