My sewing history

I have been sewing for basically my entire life, since I was about 4 anyway. The first time I made anything usable wasn't until I was 16 though when I made this bag:

 I guess it counts as applique but I didn't really know what it was at the time. Anyway, the bag lasted a couple of years and the sewing bug caught even stronger than before. It has been replaced several times since then, mostly by variations on the same basic idea. For example this one which I was particularly fond of:

There have also been excursions into dressmaking, with various degrees of success, and most other techniques I come into contact with get tried out. Sewing little mirrors was a particular fascination at one point and resulted in the following bellydance hip scarf (I made the skirt too):

However, it is decorative embroidery that I come back to again and again. Cross stitch obviously has been a big theme, starting from a kit I got as a birthday present at 14 I now do larger designs such as the Lavender and Lace alphabet bellow. I did it on 22 count aida fabric, it was lovely to sew but I left out some of the even more twee elements and it is still a bit much for my taste. I am very fond of the letter shapes though.

My other freestyle embroidery has tended to be quite simple like the stems and small leaves on the hipscarf above, though simple can still be quite effective as on the flap of this bag:

Like with my first bag, I always tend to just make stuff up as I go along; I have no training or more experienced sewers to advise me and tend to make adjustments to any pattern I try to follow. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I have got quite good at working stuff out for myself but I feel that in order to improve I need to start pushing myself a bit more. The RSN teaches in Durham where I live but there is absolutely no way I can afford the course fees no mater how much I would like, so more self teaching it is. The idea of this blog is to provide an impetus and a record for my attempts to develop skills in more complex techniques and designs.