I’m reasonably new to sewing but health issues have forced me to slow down for a while. I need to have projects on the go, I need to create, I need to experiment. I attended a free motion embroidery class which led to the creation of ‘not the norm textiles ‘ with a friend and a series of portraits.

I then decided I needed to be able to sew straight lines which I found a lot more challenging than free motion. I made tissue holders (loads of them)- four straight lines and that’s it – result!

I progressed to simple pouches/purses – definitely a bit hit and miss with the zippers 😂. I spent hours on Pinterest and worked out how to sew bags, tweaked the patterns and made most of my Christmas presents.

I’m not good at reading Instructions or following patterns – i.e I just don’t do it. Having worked out a basic bag pattern I decided to create a bag using just

free motion quilt as you go sew outside the lines scrappy quilting.

 

There are no rules I just put scraps of materials over one another and sewed, I used random machine stitches, different angles and whatever scraps I had. It was amazingly liberating, no pins, no straight lines no worries! This can then be cut to a rectangle and used as the front of your bag – here’s my first attempt at scrappy quilting aka sewing outside the lines.