So far sew good!

Excuse the rubbish pun in title. I havent posted the last few days because I've been really busy and a bit ill over the weekend unfortunately. Anyway I finally got my sewing machine on wednesday and got some strange looks from members of the public as I dragged it across town to the bus stop. The fun part was trying to keep my balance as I walked down the bus to get off, with my arms full of sewing machine box! But I got it home and had much more success this time with setting it up and getting it started. No jams, no cutting out and no strops (from me!).  So here it is!

To try it out, I had a go at making a bow belt using Tilly's great tutorial and really enjoyed it... I admit it didnt work out first time, purely due to me stitching almost diagonally and one end being twice as thick as the other. I tried again the next day and this was the result:

Can you tell I don't feel ready to put my face on the blogsphere yet? It's not perfect but much better than the first attempt and so much fun to do. Thanks Tilly!

So yesterday I was out shopping and found a home/interiors shop selling gorgeous cushion covers (worth £19.99) that were damaged for 99p. I bought the cover below, you cant see the size but it was for a very large cushion, cut off the torn seams, made new ones and sewed it up to fit a smaller spare cushion I had in my room. I removed the zip as I had to cut through it anyway and sewed in press studs/poppers instead and it looks great! Full story and finished pics to come tomorrow. For now here is the "before" photo.

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself for fixing/remodelling the cushion cover, would not have thought I week ago that I would be able to do that, admittedly with some help from my mam but I'm still proud =]

Tomorrow I'm going "treasure hunting" in all the charity shops in town, see if I can find some gems, fingers crossed!