travel sewing mat
folded mat ready for travel

I’m delighted to be able to share the Travel Sewing Mat which I designed for Love Patchwork and Quilting Issue 35.  Once again that feels like such a long time ago (I sent it off in February).  But I do remember the amount of puzzling that went into getting the details just as I wanted them.  I had in mind some specific features so that it would work well as a travel sewing mat but I also wanted it to work as an everyday one too.  The first pincushion was a lovely size, if it had been stand-alone but looked enormous alongside the mat.  And I couldn’t quite work out how to make the pincushion and thread-catcher work with a fold-up mat until I came up with the plan of slotting the pincushion into the thread-catcher – it is so fun when the design starts falling into place (and a relief too given that I want to get it exactly right for the magazine!).

If you fancy making your own you’ll need to hunt down a copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting Magazine Issue 35.  It’s a little fiddly in parts but not too difficult – and will take much less time than a quilt does!  Thank you to all the lovely folk at LPQ – I love the opportunity they give me to play around with fabric and thoroughly enjoy the challenge of coming up with something that is hopefully worth being featured in their beautiful magazine. It really is a huge pleasure.

What about Me Made May 2016?  Well, I have reviewed my wardrobe and existing handmade clothes and have a pretty good mental plan of where to go next but I really would like to share it all here……..I’m just struggling with time a little at the moment.  I have quite a lot going on behind the scenes with some very exciting plans for keeping myself busy once Katie starts school in August.  But it isn’t entirely down to that – the garden is calling, cooking good family food is an ever present desire, not to mention walking the dog and looking after my wee rascals (the human ones!) and, as ever, I’m always very good at getting excited about new ideas and fresh approaches and find it much harder to follow all the way through to the end!  Do you do that too?