Well, here's something I've intended doing for a long time

Every year for about the last five years I've said 'This is the year I learn to use my sewing machine'. I never learned at school because at the end of my first year of senior school I moved from a school that taught how to use a sewing machine in year two, to one which had taught the skill in year one. And as I was someone who liked to stay under the radar and not make a fuss I never told the sewing teacher this, which would have been a very sensible thing to do, and somehow managed three years of sewing lessons with my mother doing the machine bits at home leaving me with hand-sewing to do in class. Madness! 

A couple of weeks ago we went to a fund raising thing for Women's Aid Orkney and there was someone there advertising sewing classes and I thought, well this is my chance, so I contacted her. I had my first lesson last week and I made this

A lined tote bag with an internal pocket. The photo is largely of the inside so that the pocket shows, also the outside is boring as it is just plain cream. Obviously it would have been nicer to have a fancier outside, but the choice of canvas  in the one fabric shop we have in Orkney was plain cream, or navy with a white stripe and honestly, I thought that I would have enough to worry about without matching stripes. 

I say I made it but really all I did was cut out and sew where the teacher told me, so minimal input from me. I am hopeful that this will improve as time goes on. This week it's a cushion cover; it's not as though we are in need of any more cushions in this house, which suffers from cushion overload already, but it will teach me about putting in zips. So that's a good thing.