Trying new things!

What I love about blogsville is having my eyes opened to lots of different crafts: some (Mr f&f for one!) would argue that I have enough projects started/on the go/wanting to start already that I really don't need to be shown lots of new ideas. I love it though - although it often leads to sleepless nights as I'm excitedly planning what I could try out next it also helps me to learn lots of new skills which is always good fun.

One of the crafts that has been catching my eye lately is paper-piecing: both the more traditional English Paper Piecing of hexagons and diamonds (with some beautiful examples by Florence) and the new-to-me pieced patchwork pictures (some beautiful examples from Kerry and Charise): they amaze me in there detail and scare me every so slightly with the number of small pieces there are!

Recently, Charise launched some new patterns which I thought were just the cutest things ever! And the apron really called to me: after the beautiful apron that Elizabeth had sent me, a thank-you email had felt a bit paltry. I wanted to send something in return and as soon as I saw the apron pattern I was a woman on a mission! I downloaded the pattern and set-to with my first attempt at paper-piecing.

After printing out the pattern, and cutting out all the pieces I had a slight moment of scaredy-cat as the paper literally seemed to explode in front of me: how on earth was I meant to sew all these back together?! 

After deliberating fabrics (at one point I had five different prints!) I eventually decided to keep it simple and go with just three, before then spending some time deliberating how to position the border stripes to look right as they went around the apron. It took a while to cut all the fabric pieces out, and the smaller pieces in particular were very tricky, but eventually I got there.


The sewing together of all the pieces really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be: I reckon that it  took me a little over an hour to sew the block all together and it would have been a lot quicker if it hadn't taken me four attempts to get the bow just right!!! In the end, I resorted to using a pin to help me align the seams of the bow on the two corressponding pieces and then it sewed together seamlessly and all was good! Do you want to see how it turned out?
Vintage apron by fabric&flowers




















































I added a border and popped it in the post to Elizabeth and am now very excited to see what it's turned in to!

Oh, and did you notice the different look to my photo's today? I've taken the plunge and joined Instagram this week. I'm still trying to find my way around and get used to it all but would love to join up with you if you're on there. I'm fabricandflowersuk!

Sx

Todays sky ● I think I'm going to have to say grey....although there's been flashes of blue there's been torrential rain!

Labels: