once upon a time

As a child at school my sewing was the of the forced kind. The sort of school lessons that left you firmly believing that it took at least six weeks to sew anything and by time you had it would be so grubby and crumpled that it quickly became the next terms project as seams were ripped and what began life as a skirt was transformed into a P.E. kit bag. If only I'd learnt back then that you could actually make stuff that didnt have to take forever. Of course being the artsy type that didnt stop my head working on projects only a total lack of skill with a sewing machine stopped me making anything until the 1980's when a pack of Laura Ashley squares came into my possession. I made two things. The first a quilt of sorts, large squares simply sewn together on an old hand singer sewing machine and for my daughter the head of a hobby horse. Neither of which have survived to this day. I think both perished in the flood of 86'. A year or so later I tried patchwork proper managing to make a single very large cushion of 2" squares. That was it, my sewing history, until 2 years ago when I rashly decided I wanted a small memory quilt out of old shirts. From that point forward I was hooked. Adventures in appliqué and quilting followed and I now think of myself as a have a goer