Tag Archives: sewing

[podcast] yeah for Episode 1!

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I’m thrilled today to be broadcasting my first ever video podcast! I’ve been thinking about creating my own video podcast for a long time now and finally jumped into it. I knew next to nothing about video recording and editing but thanks to online research, youtube tutorials and the help of other poscasters, I did it! 🙂

Sorry for all the wiggling: I really need to stop moving my arms and shoulders like this when I’m recording 🙂 I’m not happy with the quality of the image and sound, so I’ve upgraded to a new camera and depending on the results, I might also invest in a little microphone. Please do send comments and feedback, I hope you enjoy it!

1/12/2016 edit: sorry but since posting this, Steph C from the Cake Patterns and 3 hours past the edge of the world seems to have closed her websites

Show notes

[embroidery] Normal service will resume shortly

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Yes, I’m finally on holidays and at home for the most part, it means I can get back to my sewing machine! I did sew a few items during the weekends over the past months but haven’t had time to photograph them or even blog about them. So they will probably appear here in between newer stuff.

Sashiko swatching

Strange thing is, now I have time to sew, I don’t know where to start! I’m slightly overwhelmed: I have plenty of ideas but can’t get round to even pulling out a pattern. I want to make the most of my time at home but instead of that I seem to be wasting this time! Oh well, I’ll try not to be too hard on myself.

Above is something I haven’t technically started yet because I needed to practice before engaging time and effort in it. Since I discovered sashiko, I wanted to try; I really like embroidery but am not much into cross stitch: I prefer simple lines and colours and sashiko seems to suit my tastes a lot.

sashiko needles (very long) and sashiko thread in my tin box from last easter – isn’t it cute?

I’ve started by doing a kind of swatch: I won’t be doing anything with this at all but it helped me practice regularity of the stitches and make progress on corners. Corners are important in sashiko and there is a preferred way to do them.

Practicing corners on the smaller squares

Inspiration and motifs come from this book: The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook by Susan Briscoe. It has beautiful stitch patterns and clear instructions on where to start when you’re an absolute beginner like me.


If you’re interested in this kind of embroidery, I really recommend this book : I probably won’t use all the patterns but there are so many that the book will keep me occupied a long time before I need to move on to something else.