bookmark

I'm so excited - my daughter is starting to show an interest in sewing. Creating is definitely where her skillset lies. She loathes maths because she finds it difficult but when it comes to arty things, her imagination runs wild. At school she does after-school clubs such as felt sewing, stone painting, watercolour painting, pottery and then comes home with some unbelievable stuff. For instance, I have a square felt cushion on my bed (one side purple with a green flower and the other pink with a purple heart), which I absolutely love. All the stitches are so neat. But she's not called "Magpie" for nothing - always homing in on anything bright and shiny. But now she's got her eagle eyes on my fabric stash and, aaaaaargh, my beads!

Over a recent weekend we had some seriously good girlie time together in my sewing room. I let her choose her fabrics and embroidery floss then I sat by as she set to work making a bookmark, as illustrated in one of my favourite books of the moment. All very timely really, since her school was holding a make-a-bookmark competition to tie in with a topic they had been working on all week.

She picked out some antique Bavarian fabric (pink of course, although had it been purple that would have been even better) for the backing and decided on a theme. Next up, a pencil drawing of a princess on natural linen, followed by a running stitch over the outline to bring the picture to life, even giving Princess some silver slippers! Then we did a joint effort on the sewing machine, me operating the foot pedal whilst she took charge of the fabric and, hey presto, a bookmark was born ...

We had such a lovely time doing that and the end result was, I think, absolutely gorgeous. However, the real thrill for me was very definitely that she was taking such an interest in the choosing, the sewing and also the wondering of who had owned that fabric before us, so many years ago. Priceless!

And since you may be wondering about the competition? Guess what ... she won. Hurrah!

Enjoy the day x

(PS - and on the subject of winning, thank you so so much to Jeanne for nominating me for a newly discovered blog award. I am thrilled to bits and have already been told off by my son for "boasting"!!)