Your First Sewing Class in Abu Dhabi, Start to Finish

Booking something you have never done before is uncomfortable mostly because you cannot picture it. So here is the first lesson from start to finish, in the order it happens.

Before you come

You write to me, we find a time, and that is the whole preparation. There is nothing to buy, nothing to read first and nothing to practise.

Wear something comfortable. You will be sitting at a machine, leaning over fabric and standing up to press seams, so this is not an occasion for a good abaya or a stiff blazer.

The first ten minutes are talking, not sewing

I ask what you want to be able to make. Not in a formal way, but because the answer changes what we do next.

Some women arrive with a specific thing in mind, a dress for an event with a date on it. Some want to sew for their children. Some have no target at all and simply want to try, which is a perfectly good answer and more common than you would think.

I also ask what you have done before. If you sewed at school and remember more than you expect, we find that out now and start further along instead of teaching you the needle.

Then you sit down at the machine

The machine is already set up and threaded, so nothing is broken before we begin.

You learn what the parts do and, more importantly, how to control the speed. Almost everyone starts by pressing the pedal like a car accelerator and sending the fabric flying. That is normal, everyone does it, and it takes about five minutes to stop doing it.

Straight lines on scrap first

Before any real fabric gets cut, you sew lines on a scrap. Straight ones, then a corner, then a curve.

This part looks pointless and is the opposite. Sewing is mostly steering, and steering is a physical skill that lives in your hands, not in your head. Reading about it does nothing. Ten minutes of scrap does a lot.

Your first lines will wander. Everyone's do.

Then something real

We start with an accessory or a simple piece rather than a garment, because you want to finish something in one sitting and a dress does not fit into ninety minutes. Nobody sews a dress in ninety minutes, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a course.

You take the finished thing home. That matters more than it sounds. Leaving with an object you made yourself is a different feeling from leaving with notes about how you would make one.

What we do not do

Nobody stands over your shoulder, because there is no group and no one else in the room. Lessons are one to one and the studio is women only, so mistakes stay between us and the seam ripper.

There is also no sales talk at the end. You pay for the lesson you took, you go home, and you decide in your own time whether to come back. If you never do, nothing was wasted. You found out.

The practical details

A first lesson is 250 AED and runs about ninety minutes, in my studio on Al Reem Island. The machine, tools, patterns and fabric for your first pieces are included, and the full price breakdown is written out separately.

If what is holding you back is not the logistics but the feeling that you will be bad at it, I wrote about the five fears women bring to a first lesson. You will recognise at least one.

The sewing classes page has the rest. Or just write to me and we will find a time.