I am far from good at sewing. My mom once made my sister’s grade eight graduation dress. I stood in awe at the fact she was capable of making something so awesome. I tried to use her ancient singer for years. It hated me. Never once did it co-operate. A few weeks ago, I attempted to use my sister’s sewing machine. It’s much newer and much more fond of me. I managed to pump out 70 cloth diaper inserts, which were really just 4 layers of rectangles sewn together around the edge.

With some confidence in my abilities, today I decided to finish off my beloved Chatsworth House cross-stitch I picked up in England back in October. My mom taught me how to cross-stitch when I was rather young. It was so exciting to pick it up again as an adult and actually finish a fair-sized piece!

I had decided I wanted to make it into a pillow. There’s an awesome discount fabric store in Edmonton that I found a really nice gold material at. Bonus that it was on clearance too! I picked up a pillow form while I was there too. I knew I wanted the pillow slip to come off the pillow form, just in case it needed to be cleaned at some point. I went back and forth between a zipper and buttons until I realized that making a pocket would be the easiest thing to sew.

After ripping out three seams after realizing that the cross-stitch was on backward, and sewing three seams around its entirety to get the size tight enough, I finally can say I sewed something half decent!

Sewing is definitely something I’d love to do more of! What was your first sewing project?