What project are you most pleased with?

I am so envious of those of you who show creativity. I am not an artistic person. My sisters are more artistic as they make cakes with excellent decorations on and flower arrange. At Christmas we all meet up and make a hand made wreath to put on our parents grave. I try my best and do push a few pieces of holly and ivy in but my sisters tidies it up at the end.

The project I’m most pleased with is this caravan that I crocheted for my GD. She absolutely loved it.

When I was 14 and taking dressmaking at school we had to make an item of clothing for one of the staff. I got the music teacher and she chose a blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a silky material in a tan colour. I thought it was horrendous and the trouble I had setting the sleeves in and hand sewing all the button holes ( a requirement of Mrs Swingler the teacher). But in the end after much angst on my part it turned out well and the teacher loved it. I was very proud when she wore it to the school concert .

How I envy all you creative and capable people. I am useless with my hands. My late mum was a whizz with a sewing machine but sadly her genes passed me by. We have a house in Spain and I would like 2 royal blue rugs and a matching silk throw across the bottom of the bed. However I can’t find anything in the right colour. You clever ones would buy some fabric and make your own throw but it’s just beyond me

I am working on a project, at the moment, with equal amounts of pleasure and frustration. I decided to collate photo albums of my 2 AC. These will span about 35 years each. They start with baby pics, and go through their individual lives, with holidays, birthdays, Christmas etc. I have had to get copies done of all the pics. The problem comes when lots of the pics have no dates on them. I have to try and guess the ages of the child. At the moment I have pics of 3 Christmas dinners which have the same date. lol

I made a small needlework (mix of patchwork, applique and embroidery) wall hanging of Queen Elizabeth I. If I was as clever with the computer as I am with a needle I'd be able to put a picture on here, but sadly I'm a bit thick in that department. Still, if I was that clever a know-all I'd be really insufferable, wouldn't I?

Tutankhamun and Nefertiti tapestries. I bought a bag of tapestry wool at a boot sale for £2, and the pattern was inside the bag. I had never tried anything like this before, and I can't really say that I enjoyed doing them. It took me months to do, but when they were finished and I framed them I was so pleased. They look really good and I am so glad that I persevered with them. Over the years I have gone to local classes for all sorts of crafts, and I still find it strange that these are my favourite things even though it was something I didn't really enjoy doing.

Since retiring I have learned to quilt and to crochet. I'm proudest if completing jobs, I get fed up with the colour/pattern/duration it takes to finish.

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I do a lot of knitting and crochet but I think the ones I'm most proud of are the blankets I made for my grandsons. The word one I charted myself. They both loved them.

I think my best thing was way back in the seventies. I had just left home to begin working as an Air Traffic Control Assistant at Gatwick Airport. I had access to my Mums sewing machine......back home on the Isle of Wight, but nothing in my digs! So I ended up making myself a lovely summer dress completely by hand. It took a while, but I was chuffed to bits at the result!

I have made knitted or crocheted blankets for most of our 6 grandchildren as well as aran jackets and sweaters but the thing I am most pleased about is the last knitted blanket, single bed size for our youngest gc and my 95 yr old father in law knitted some squares, the little boy's eldest aunt, my eldest dd knitted a couple and her eldest also knitted a few so it was made by 4 generations!

School aprons! You all got off lightly! We had to make a school blouse, with collar and cuffs, and a nightdress made of horribly cold slippery fabric, which had a square faced neckline (which I NEVER wore)
I'm not very good at handicrafts, but I made a huge hand-sewn patchwork quilt, which took several years of my life in fits and starts. I was very pleased with that.
My most proud achievement, though, was a knitted waistcoat that I made for my mother - round about 1950 - when I was about 12. She wore it all the time, until she put on weight. Then it disappeared. She died many years later, and when I was sorting out her possessions I was amazed, and deeply touched, to find the waistcoat lovingly folded away in a drawer. I have tears in my eyes even now, just thinking of how she must have cherished it for all those years.

Hopeless at sewing, needlework etc, never completed a project,but I have just finished writing a bok, chuffed with that project.

I made a cushion to see if I could manage to do proper piping. It turned out that I could but my zips were shaky. Theoddbird's sculpture makes me blush with inadequacy, however.

I always used to make clothes for my kids, soft toys, curtains etc but stopped when they grew up and I moved abroad. On returning to the UK my 9 year old granddaughter asked me to make her a Victorian costume for a School visit to a Museum, I happily agreed but then I realised I no longer had a sewing machine. So having measured her I made a template out of newspaper and hand sewed her a very successful dress from a double bed valance and the requisite frilly pinny from an old sheet, adornments of broderie anglaise and ribbons completed the costume.

She looked a picture and I was so pleased it revived my interest and I bought a sewing machine.

My sewing machine gave up & went to sewing machine graveyard many years ago never to replaced, I have no spare room to use for sewing although for many years I made a lot of my own clothes including a linen suit.

My proudest achievement in the last 3 years is transforming the overgrown wilderness of the garden when I moved here into something which resembles a loved garden, still a work in progress as I need to start saving now for some paid labour

I think all the crochet blankets I have made for babies. My three, four grandchildren, one great-nephew and several friends' babies. Then I made a full-sized throw from leftover wools in the same colour palette and my oldest daughter bagged it for herself. She is child free but I did make two blankets for her cat!

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.

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!

TheoddBird, amazing!

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...

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.

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

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

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.