On Friday evening we enjoyed this months Sew It’s Friday session with 8 lovely ladies.
Karen began by explaining how her mum came up with this relatively simple but extremely effective technique for producing your very own original piece of hand embroidery quite a number of years ago. In fact one of our ladies said that she was fulfilling a long held ambition, as she’d wanted to try it our many years ago having seen it at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate!
Having shown the group lots of examples, including one beautiful piece done by a 6 year old! Karen encouraged everyone to prepare their piece of Calico using some water colour pencils. We saw how simply adding a small amount of colour to the background sets off the creative process and gets your imagination flowing.
We learnt lots of practical tips for getting the best results and everyone tried out using an embroidery hoop which was a new experience for some!
Now it was time to have some fun and start stitching.
People started off using green embroidery threads to give shape to their ‘picture’ and then it was time to get stuck into adding colours, shapes and textures with lots of imagination thrown in. 
Karen was constantly on hand to give people ideas and advice about which stitches to use and everyone got a useful leaflet to take home explaining how to use a few simple stitches.
We have more sessions planned for Sew It’s Friday. We are intending to make a set of 3 co-ordinating items which you can use for a holiday. The first is a book cover. The book could become your holiday journal or maybe you could use it for making your lists when planning your holiday? Next we are going to decorate a bag to use as a beach bag or for carrying all those essential items on a day trip. Finally we’ll make a sunglasses case. The idea is to make them all as a matching set for yourself or as a gift. Karen has come up with this very summery hand applique design which I think will look great. 
We want to be flexible about things though. You could make the 3 items and add your own design ideas or use the embroidery techniques we did on Friday to make your own totally unique items. If you haven’t been to one of our Sew It’s Friday groups before and fancy a relaxing evening of creativity why not book your place now?