Oh my goodness!

I now have in front of me a whole empty blog and it seems rather daunting.  Where on earth should I start?  Let's face it though, not many people (if any!) are likely to read this first post so maybe I should just plunge right in and get on with it...

For about a year now, I've been enjoying reading about other people's creative passions on a huge number of fascinating blogs, and more and more it has looked like a great way to share interests and enthusiasms, whilst charting a personal journey.  And as I am at a kind of crossroads in my life at the moment (leaving behind the security of teaching for a, hopefully, more creative future) I felt drawn towards starting a blog of my own.  So here goes!

I wonder if anyone else began their career as a stitchy-sort with this book?  It took pride of place (along with the similarly inspirational 'My Learn to Cook Book') on the bookshelf when I was about nine. After a few years dabbling in toymaking from this book, I moved onto dressmaking, with a bibbed skirt in very stiff turquoise and white ticking type material being the first thing I ever completed.  I was lucky in having a mum who did lots of sewing, especially when  my sister and I were small and in need of new dresses, so I guess I picked up quite a bit that way.  I know for certain that the dressmaking lessons my friends and I endured at school were not very helpful - all that having to do things properly with yards of thread for marking, pinning, tacking and stitching was not my style at fourteen, and neither was the resulting brown pinafore dress, which prompted my not-so-secret heart-throb to ask me when the baby was due...


All through my teens and twenties, I made most of my own clothes, culminating in making my wedding dress with my good friend Lesley, a dress I was very happy with.

And that was about when I stopped sewing.  When our daughter was born a year and a half later I thought she'd be almost permanently dressed in something mummy had made, but I afraid to say all I ever found time for was one corduroy pinafore and her christening dress (made from the remnants from my wedding dress).  


I think I started sewing again when my dear-and-usually-very-understanding husband suggested that my enormous Victorian trunk full of fabric was taking up a lot of room for absolutely no purpose whatsoever and maybe I should get rid of it.  Panic set in!  I couldn't part with all those scraps!  Each of them held a special memory.  So I set about some hasty patchworking to create a pair of single quilts to show that the trunk and its contents were very much needed.  I decided to follow Lesley's top tip for cosy quiltmaking and use old woollen blankets for the wadding - Lesley's quilts (and there are many, all of them beautiful, and she's a headteacher!) are always so much more snuggly as they have a bit of weight in them. So I popped along to one of the local charity shops to buy a couple of old blankets and somehow came back with a pile of old fabric and a couple of holey-but-oh-so-pretty tablecloths too.  And there it all began again.  

So I've filled some space.  I think I've managed to attach some photos.  Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?


Till next time!