Herein lies the tale of why you should look before you leap!

I often think of the saying ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ when I am sewing.  I get too easily bored repeating the same thing over and over again to perfect one aspect of sewing so I tend to stick my nose into everything at some point.  My latest desire was to try out patchwork and quilting as it was one thing that I had managed to miss in the last 30 odd years I have been sewing and knitting.

As I was moving stuff up into my new sewing space I came across some bits of material I had been saving for just such a play!  Anything less than 1 metre is a ‘bit’ in my book, it is not quite enough to make something decent with as I don’t tend to make separates to wear.  It didn’t take long for the noticing of the ‘bits’ to turn into a ‘let’s play with my rotary cutter, mat and 6 inch square template as I haven’t used it yet’ session.

I stood there for over an hour cutting little squares out of the bits of fabric and placed them lovingly in one of my pretty new boxes and I felt quite impressed at my achievement until I realised that now I had cut them, I had to do something with them.

In my usual way I considered for all of about 30 seconds, then decided that it was only a matter of sewing 9 squares together for me to get half a cushion cover, sew 9 more together and I have the whole thing (ahhhh the naivety of it!).

So I sewed the squares together (am I sounding stupid now?) then sewed my bigger squares together and in went a zip and here is my cushion cover, my first ever attempt at patchwork.

I merrily trotted down the stairs to show hubby my feat of sewing, he admired it greatly and then told me how well all the squares matched up.

It was around about this time that I looked at it, I mean really looked at it.

Ummm, no, the squares don’t match up really well.

Ummm, maybe I should have spent a bit longer than 30 seconds thinking about this.

In fact, I am only still impressed with the fact that I did press all the seams while making it so at least I did that right.

I slouched back up the stairs and placed my (3 minutes ago work of art, now a bit ok but those squares don’t match ergh) cushion with its newly made cover on my sewing chair.  After all it is only going to see my backside isn’t it?

I then crept back downstairs and took a proper look at how to do it with my faithful laptop search.  I will let you know how I got on in my next post but for now I am just hoping I am not the only person who can so quickly throw themself into something while deep inside knowing it is a skill not a quick fix! Luckily I realised my error before moving onto the quilting, there is only so much shame a person can take you know.