Thursday 13 September 2012

Let's start at the very beginning...

The other day, when I was writing about UFOs, I was looking through a zip-lock bag I have of bits and bobs I've made - you know the type of thing, a free kit from a magazine, a cute kit you've fancied but once made up you've no idea what to do with or where to put it ...  Well, in amongst all of this I found some of my earliest embroideries and thought that I'd share them with you.  Hopefully you can see how far I've come since I started!!

My very first project was this tray cloth.  I found an old biscuit tin filled with embroidery silks that belonged to my maternal grandmother and it was that that triggered my obsession with embroidery.  She died a little over a year before I was born and had left this tray cloth unfinished.  So with her help, it started my 'career' with embroidery.  No prizes for guessing which part my Nain did and which is mine!



After finishing it, we showed it to my grandmother's sister, also an excellent embroideress, and the following Christmas I got the kit for this tray cloth from her.
The following pictures are pieces I made at school at various times - I'm sure you all recognise the style!  Unfortunately, I'm really showing my age with some of these!!  I'm not sure whether it was while we were sewing the top or the middle one, but my class had taken our chairs outdoors as it was so sunny and were sewing outside our classroom when one of the boys realised he'd sewn his 'sampler' to his shorts!  I wonder whether that was the end of Ben's sewing career?!




I also remember my DM being mortified when she saw the middle one and asked me to unpick some of it, but I never did.  I was so fed up with everyone discussing who they thought had shot JR in Dallas while we were all sewing that I lost my rag and 'confessed'!!  I suppose it dates it and is quite apt now, as the new series has just started over here.

PS: apologies for some of the slightly blurry photos - my camera isn't well and focussing is a bit of an effort.  I suspect it isn't much longer for this world.

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