I signed up to Carla Sonheims new sewing class, Rags to Stitches, which started today. What a great name for a sewing class!

I have been wanting to do something practical for a while, this should be fun.

It was so good to get my sewing machine out. It has just had a service and is flying, don’t you just love it when things work?
The supply list for today was just fabric scraps, needle & thread or sewing machine and a pair of scissors.

Day 1. Make a rag quilt to use later as fabric.

I love to do this and sometimes do it with paper, re-purposing at it’s best.
You start with a bottom layer of plain cotton and stitch squares or rectangles of fabric to the cotton, now the backing. Try to vary the sizes of fabric and mix up the colours.
You can vary the type of stitches as much or as little as you like. I have made ‘fabric’ from fine cotton and scraps of paper either glued or machine stitched the scraps to the cotton.

We will be cutting the ‘new piece’ of fabric later.
I tried not to over think the quilt, it is supposed to be intuitive (!) I will be able to machine stitch, hand stitch or bead later, as much as I was tempted, any finishing stitches or beads won’t work as soon as I put the scissors near to it.

I tied off all my threads whilst watching a lovely programme called The Great Bear Stakeout on the iPlayer. Have you seen it? I think it is worth a watch, I kept Oooing and Awwing and saying “no, no” and “Oh wow!” It’s a good thing no-one was listening…

Tomorrow, in class, we are making an owl.

My raggy quilt