Trying to be Crafty

Since last summer I'd been thinking that I ought to try and make little things like lavender bags and pin cushions. I'd kept putting it off but over the last couple of weeks after finally getting out to the fabric shops to see what material they had in their sales I was ready to go. Now, I'm not by any means a natural in this art form, in fact, I usually avoid anything to do with needles and thread apart from sewing on buttons and I really have to work myself up to doing that. I think it all stems from my first year at grammar school when, in what were then called domestic science classes, we had to sew our own cookery aprons and little hats. Oh, what a picture mine was and I spent the first couple of years in an oddly shaped, bunched up apron and a very strange looking hat. I still enjoyed the cooking though and I remember being pleased when my Christmas cake and later my jar of marmalade both went on display in the cookery lab.

What really inspired me was getting a new sewing machine last year. I have my mother's old Singer hand machine but I couldn't get it to work any more and I had a voucher for fifty pounds off this little treasure - so it only cost me just over 30 pounds. As you can see, Tom decided he had to have a ringside seat to watch the action.

I decided to venture further and make a bag from a very simple pattern that someone gave to me - Paul helped me by making the paper template and I pinned it to the fabric and cut it, he worked out where the folds had to be pressed in and I did all the sewing to put it together. I've got another one cut out and ready to sew and enough material left to make a couple of cushion covers.

I'm quite pleased with the finished articles and plan to make loads more things - so friends and family beware; you now know what you will be getting for presents in the future - as well as the homemade jam, marmalade and chutney of course.