Unlike a lot of my friends I didn’t grow up around family who sewed. I was first introduced to sewing when I was at secondary school, and I loved it. I remember asking my parents for a sewing machine for my Christmas. They were fortunate as my Dad’s best friend’s sister was the manager of the local Singer sewing machine shop so she helped them to pick the right sewing machine for me, which came with a cabinet.
I got it and I loved sewing, I made quite a lot of clothes while I was growing up. I then went off to University and started working full time, the sewing machine was packed away and not touched. I got married and decided that I wanted to get back into sewing again so in 2016, I got a Janome sewing machine. At the time I got this I also got an overlocker as there was as special deal and shortly after decided to get a Brother embroidery machine.
I very quickly became a fan of the embroidery and started making all kinds of embroidered items, I customised t-shirts, made pictures etc.
During the pandemic I started sewing more and like most people with sewing machines I was soon making lots and lots of face masks.
As I was furloughed I took the time to start quilting and bought my first quilt kit and learnt along with the a lot of other people using Facebook lives and videos to help me work out how to achieve this mystical thing called a quilt. All the terms, wadding, batting and quilt sandwich etc it was all very baffling.
My very first quilt that I made was a Dresden Plate, using a kit from Sarah Payne, but we will talk more about that later.