Appliqué Freaqué

These past few Saturdays I've been having a rare old time at sewing workshops run by School of Craft. You may remember I did the beginner's course with Jo and learnt to make tote bags and cushions.

Since that course ended I have been bereft, but luckily I managed to get on a couple of her Saturday workshops.  I went along to her Applique workshop, and learnt lots of different techniques both for hand and machine applique.

I'm a big fan of Bondaweb anyway, but I was shown some beautiful effects - look at the School of Craft blog for some of the examples Jo brought along.

What a great way to update tired clothes or bring to life plain kids t-shirts.  I've already bought a bundle of long-sleeved tops for Ruby that I plan to get crafty on, and am stashing little pieces of fabric like a lunatic.

Here's my finished sampler.

The old man is already worried that I'm going to go 'Appliqué Freaqué' to coin his phrase. Oh yes indeed - if we have a row he won't come home to find all his suits slashed, more likely he'll find them prettily embellished with offensive slogans in colour co-ordinated felt!

Jo also tempted my to buy this book (as you can imagine, I needed a lot of arm twisting).  The Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts by the crafting jailbird queen herself already has me totally hooked.  A huge hardback book, complete with a CD-rom of templates and patterns, this Martha Stewart can by picked up for less than a fiver at the moment on book websites.

It's crammed full of beautiful projects and step-by-step guides.

Do yourself a favour and go buy it and get your craft on!  Even better, if you live near Bedford, sign up for a School of Craft course.

This is NOT a sponsored post!