What project are you most pleased with?

I envy you, Witzend. I'm hopeless with any kind of project. It took me seven years to make the school apron....

blinko did everyone make the school apron? I thought it was just us, plus a thing that went around our head with our names carefully embroidered on them.
I’ve made loads of stuff over the last 50 years or so, bridesmaids dresses, DDS clothes, dolls clothes, bed hangings for four posters , quilts, box cushions, sofa covers, the list goes on, but at the moment I can’t face getting my machines out. I think I’m done, my scissors have been hung up, possibly for ever.

I am torn between DD and I successfully making soft covers for a huge settee and some bedspreads I made with vintage sheets with embroidered ends.

I collected lots of pieces of vintage floral fabric, sewed pieces of vintage embroidery in the centre and sewed then randomly onto the sheets with contrasting cotton and stitches round the edges of the patches to make two bedspreads for a cottagey bedroom.

I am particularly proud of them because I

monica don’t leave us hanging

Because I was drunk at the time?

Didn’t have a sewing machine?

Do tell

Oh, the dreaded school cookery apron! I was amazed to find that nearly 30 years later, dd1 had to make exactly the same wretched thing at school as I did. And she LOATHED needlework (still does) so I don't mind admitting that I ended up doing most of it.

I ended up with 'C+. Neatness and accuracy are 2 skills which you must practice.'
I thought it very noble of me not to point out that the verb is 'practise'.

Witzend, I can imagine how pleased and proud you are. Recently I made "booster" cushions for our sofas. To get round the long zip problem, I discovered that you can buy zips by the yard/metre on line, with as many zip pullers as needed. After a quick squiz at Youtube, it's an easy matter to fit the pullers to the zips, and hey presto, a zip as long as you need. Simples.

Monica, your bedspreads sound lovely! I'm hopeless at anything needing artistic flair - straight seams are about my limit.

I was too daft to think of looking online until later, Auntie Flo. Once Dh suggested 2 to meet in the middle, I was off to John Lewis' haberdashery dept. - so lucky to have a JL nearby.

not sure what happened there, it posted itself. to continue:
...come form a family of skilled needle women and I am the dud and really gave up on needlework, but DD encouraged me to start again, quoting GS Chesterton, 'if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly' It is wonderful how I have improved with encouragement rather than people trying to help me by telling me where I am going wrong.

I am the opposite to you, M0nica - I sewed and made my own clothes from the age of about 14, have made clothes, household furnishings, recovered chairs etc over the years but seem to have lost my knack in recent years.

However, I am proud to have made a serviceable peg bag recently - without a pattern.
And I made lots of bunting at Christmas (there were some lovely fat quarters in JL).

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201804/medium-469410-38271168-1594-4f96-8d38-27e767ba4992.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201804/medium-181035-88ffbf34-0827-4a5c-96ab-d31908a2403d.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201804/medium-493528-7d260792-c852-4dc6-ad73-401b7c80ba99.jpeg

Not a sewing project but two cakes for twin DGC. I used to do cake decorating on fruit cakes, flowers and the like with flowerpaste about 15 years ago but have never decorated sponge cakes or piped buttercream. Thanks to Utube I managed two passable cakes. All the layers wer different colours, four for the unicorn and three for the camper van. Learning I could make them in advance was the lifesaver. They tasted good..
Very proud of myself!

Very impressive Nandalot

Witzend All my ideas come from looking at magazines and pinterest. The idea for my bedspreads came from a Frencg craft magazine and was adapted from a table cloth pattern.

Wow, Nandalot, brilliant! Actually I have just remembered a particularly splendid (by my standards, anyway) pj case I made when I was about ten. It was yellow, like custard, embroidered with a lovely blue cornflower, it was lined with fine white material and folded over to form the case. It looked quite the thing. I don't think I've ever done anything better. Wunderbar!

PS my maternal GM was a professional tailor. Clearly it didn't come down through the generations

This week, 14 jars of chutney, prepped, cooked, bottled, labelled and sitting in the (spare - lucky us!) fridge.

I used to sew all the time. In the past I have made wedding dresses and I used to use a wee room as my sewing room before I had my family. Recently I was approached out the blue to make 2 incredibly detailed dance costumes for a special gala event. I used yards and yards of tulle, velvet etc. I even ended up blinging up a hat to match. The families involved were ecstatic! I think I may be asked to make more. I realised I had forgotten how rewarding it was to create something from scratch.

Witzend, Ebay have upholstery zips by the metre very cheap too, about £1.00 per metre.

Well done. Cushions are one of those things that look easy until you try to do them. I've never had much success.

I love the cake nandalot.

I gave myself the task of learnig to crochet from You Tube while I'm here with foot up after surgery for*** weeks. I have managed one square.

This sculpture is something I am very proud of. It is now in eldest daughter's attic as I have no space to put it...

TheoddBird, amazing!

That is fantastic, Oddbird! I couldn't do anything a quarter as good if my life depended on it.
I am so un-artistic I should probably be in the Guinness Book of Records. Used to envy so much girls at school who could draw lifelike ponies etc. all over their rough books!

As three of the four members of my mother's family died before they were 60 I am pretty chuffed at still being here at 67. All the other things are just a lovely bonus.