ElleAyJay: Time and Effort Bear Fruit

I am delighted to say that I have completed another appliqué blanket and this time it's for me to keep, rather than to give away. I am finally enjoying what my friends have been enjoying (or so they tell me) for a while now.

Amidst catching up on the news, drinking tea and eating cake at Craft Club the other weekend, I managed to make 15 bird templates. Each one is first drawn onto the paper backing of a roll of bondaweb before being roughly cut out. These are then ironed onto the wrong side of your chosen appliqué fabric before being cut out, carefully following the drawn lines this time.

Since I was applying my 'birds on a wire' design to the blanket, the next step was to mark and sew the three wires that sit at a very slight diagonal across the whole of the blanket. I measure and mark the lines with tailors chalk before setting the sewing machine to the shortest stitch possible without the stitches ending up on top of each other and then setting it to a medium width of zig-zag. Many metres of thread later you can not only admire your three straight lines but also set about arranging your birds along their wires.

As I say, lots of news needed to be caught up on, interspersed with tea drinking and cake eating so that's about as far as I got at Craft Club. So, it was with some relish that I clocked off work early last Friday and set about carefully sewing each bird to the blanket. First you arrange the birds, then you peel off the paper backing from the bondaweb before carefully ironing each bird in place.

Sewing appliqué involves using the same zig zag stitch as used to sew the 'wires' but to enable the fabric to slide neatly under the sewing machine foot and give you an element of rigidity and control of the fabric, you pin a piece of paper to the back of the blanket beneath where your appliqué shape, in my case a bird, sits. I find it easier to start at a point, usually a beak, and then steadily work my way around the shape. I try to continuously move the fabric to get a smooth line but some curves are just too acute, as are all corners, so you end up lifting the sewing foot and making a slightly larger adjustment. Just remember to keep the needle in the fabric before lifting the foot or you will completely lose your place.

You also need stop the needle on the correct side of the fabric so that your zig zag stitches don't get too spaced out. So, if you are sewing clockwise around the outer edge of a ring, keep the needle down when it's at the outer edge of the fabric. This is the right hand edge of the zig zag stitch. If you are sewing clockwise around the inner edge of a ring, also keep the needle down when on its right hand edge of the zig zag stitch but this will be in the appliqué fabric as opposed to just in the blanket fabric. This is probably something you need to read as you are sewing for it to make sense but I promise it gives a better result.

Anyway, what with the pinning of the paper and then tearing away the paper once I'd completed each bird, I think I managed a bird every four to five minutes. This must be a record for me - I must be improving with practice! With a few slurps of tea as I went as well as stopping to load on more thread, I had completed all 15 birds in about an hour and a half.

The final step was to pin and then blanket stitch a hem all the way around the edge of the blanket, which was a task I enjoyed over the next few days, either nattering with a friend or catching up on some TV.

I am really pleased with the result and it has already been put to very practical use, warming me up after getting a bit of a soaking on my cycle home from work on Tuesday!

I'm also equally pleased to be able to share with you more fruits of my labour. This time the labour has been less intense but certainly fruitful - literally. This is a project that began back in March with the sewing of some tomato and chilli seeds and I'm pleased to say that the first crops are appearing.