Not one but two finishes!

I am surprised to find that I have not one, but two finishes to report this week! I shall probably have to lie down in a darkened room for a while after writing this post to recover :)

First up is this paper-pieced patchwork pouch (that's a bit of a mouthful to say!), which I have been wanting to make for a while.

The pattern for the pouch is from Patchwork Please by Ayumi Takahashi, which I bought when it first came out a while ago, but this is the first project that I have actually made from it. I am delighted with how the pouch turned out, but there was some head-scratching involved in interpreting the instructions.

"Mark the centre points on both long edges of the panel 1.25" from either corner"

I still have not been able to work out this one!

Emboldened by my success though, I decided to have a go at another project from the book. Rather rashly I thought that I would have a go at the Embroidery Pouch, where I hit my first problem. The pouch in the book has a delightful patchwork star pattern for the front panel, but although there are several other paper piecing patterns for other projects in the book, readers were blithely instructed to draw templates on paper to create their own. Now, it may just be me, but I feel that if I have paid good money for a book of patterns then maybe it is not unreasonable to expect that the patterns might be included! As it was the templates provided to piece the star block front panel needed to be resized and given my recent problems with the photocopies I didn't really think that my son would take too kindly to another request :)

So, I decided to do my own thing instead!

I rummaged through my scrap basket to find all my sewing related fabrics and used them to create this front panel.

The interior of the pouch includes a see-through vinyl pocket with binding. Given that vinyl is not a material that many sewers will have a lot of experience with, I thought that the instructions for the pocket were particularly sparse. Again, I never could get my head around the binding instructions, so after one failed attempt trying to understand them I gave up and did it my own way. It seems to have worked :)

Again, I am happy with how the Embroidery pouch turned out but I do feel that it was despite rather than because of the instructions.

I won't be put off trying other projects in the book, but I will be more wary of the instructions for the projects from the outset.

If you can make head nor tail of the marking instruction do let me know, as it has me completely baffled :)



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