Patchwork

It's safe to say that I am secretly an old lady in a twenty-something (okay, late twenties, but still) body. I love knitting, I collect doilies and old books, and then there's the whole tea obsession. So now I'm taking it one step further with sewing patchwork.

I tried out this patchwork ball tutorial from purlbee.com yesterday. I hardly ever sew, and this is only my second attempt at patchwork. I nearly declared a Jihad on my sewing machine but we resolved the issue peacefully in the end (with much swearing on my part). I think I did pretty well, though I did make some mistakes. One of the fabrics should have had some interfacing as it was unraveling at the points. I should have left the opening for stuffing in the middle, not at the end, and I didn't cut as perfectly as I needed to. My patchwork ball is sort of shaped like a mutated football as a result. I definitely need more practice and better fabric/cutting tools.

Oh well. It's kind of like those first pathetic knitted swatches a person makes, where you end up with about three extra stitches on one end and a wonky part in the middle. And you love it anyway.

All in all I had a great time with this. I get tired of the pressure of only crafting for sale and gifts... sometimes it's nice just to try something out for fun of learning a new skill. It only took a couple of hours from start to finish (I'm sure a more skilled seamstress would be able to do this a lot quicker... less time spent yelling at the sewing machine) and required very little material. I may even try more. Every granny needs a quilt, right?