It can be done

Yesterday my Mum and I attended a class held at our local sewing supply shop, a day of Mother, Daughter bonding. I was a little nervous as my sewing adventures are a little hit and miss and the free style embroidery that we would be attempting is more my Mum's thing. So with Grandad on pickup duty for school, off Mum and I went.

The class is held at Franklins our local sewing supply shop, it is also where I attend my sewing classes on a Tuesday. Our teacher was the lovely Alex Waylett, who introduced herself and made us all feel very welcome. In all there were four of us ladies eager to learn how to make one of Alex's gorgeous clutch bags.

So after all had been explained to us and we had rummaged in our supply bag in front of us, we then had to make an important decision, what fabric to use on the front of our clutch bag. Would we like an evening bag or a daytime bag? How would we be using the sewing machine to embellish it?
I found a gorgeous fabric that had a mainly circular pattern, in my eyes I would perfectly sew around the circles.

So once we had cut out all our required pieces, Alex gave us pieces of fabric to practice on. The excitement was rising, what could go wrong?

My inability to sew in the gorgeous precise manner that I had first imagined when I first picked up my chosen fabric. At this point I was thinking what on earth have I got myself into, I am not going to enjoy this at all, I can not perfectly sew around the patterns. Alex came over and gave me a couple of tips, firstly the foot that I had attached to the sewing machine so that I could do the free style embroidery was too tight against the material so that the fabric underneath did not flow as easily. I also needed to even out my speed, too slow leads to large stitches and too fast leads to too small stitches. So again I attempted to embroider around the pattern, at this point it hit me, it does not have to be perfect, if I do perfectly sew around the circles you would not actually see my sewing embellishment, also why am I giving myself a hard time, it is my first attempt at this. So with this in mind I started at the edge and began to sew around my circles and yes they are far from perfect but I love the effect that I have.

I also added some black sequins and orange seed beads to embellish further. At this point I am really happy, I can't believe how much fun I am having with the sewing. Time is ticking by so Alex starts to help us with putting together our purses. I chose a lovely deep purple to be the inside.

And this is my purse before we added the clasp, I love the padded feel it has.

Alex demonstrated how to attach the clasp on one side.

Then we attempted to finish it and finish it I did. I can not believe I finished a project in a day, a sewing project at that.

I am so happy with the end result and I can not wait to have a go myself at home, I even purchased a foot for my sewing machine that will let me do the free style embroidery. I am thinking of other things that I can use the technique on, maybe even somehow manage to use it in my scrapbooking, who knows, we shall just have to wait and see.

If you would like to see more of Alex's work click here