sewly, sewly catch a monkey

(did you notice the play on words there lol)

As you have probably picked up from this blog I love knitting. I taught myself to knit about 2 years ago and I haven't stopped. But for a while now I have had a desire to sew.
I don't know why but I have felt so intimidated by it. My mother is an amazing sew-er. She makes the most incredible things (many of which have appeared here too) and they are all so beautifully finished and we just adore them. I long to be able to sew like her. So for the past few months/ weeks I have been learning.

I suppose 'being able to sew' for me means being able to draw up my own patterns.
I don't tend to knit from patterns anymore either. This is for a couple of reasons;
1. My printer is broken (Benny put foreign objects in it) so I can't print patterns off the computer and I don't have time to write them all out by hand.
2. I am too lazy. I knit in the evenings mostly when I'm quite tired and the effort of counting stitches and rows and stopping knitting to look at a pattern is too much like hard work for me
3. I have a complete inability to understand the wording and struggle with things like 'decrease at end of each row' what?
4. I tend to have a picture in my head of exactly what I want to make and I can never find a pattern for it.

So, I am slowly learning to sew, to make patterns and to make things look ok...

These two little books are my bible. I picked the kids one up from a jumble sale and fell in love straight away. I want to make everything in it for the kids. I noticed in the foot notes that the author wrote a dolls clothes book and of course I invested immediately :-)
I have made quite of dolls clothes from it, and nearly, almost managed to completely follow a pattern, but more than anything I am learning techniques.

I am writing patterns, and I am finally being able to visualise something and then make it in real life. I had in my head that this dolly needed a little green dress, with a peter pan collar. My first attempt was about 3 inches too small.the collar was way to wide on my second attempt, but then I got it.I'm really please with it and more than anything it has given me more confidence (hence the post).
The next thing I need to focus on is being a bit tidier and more organised. I'm very lazy sometimes and my drawers can end up like this...

But I am enjoying it, perhaps the kids will get some mama made clothes this year (although I cunningly bought a copy Little Clothes for Little People for my mum too) and she's brilliant at taking requests :-)