We had a lovely meeting a Skipton Stitchers, very simple idea but so much fun…

I think it was Sally’s idea, inspired by The Great British Sewing Bee program where they have one and a half hours to recycle a random item into something vaguely wearable.

Sally gave us each an envelope with identical contents, five pieces of fabric, four little buttons and a short length of lace together with a piece of calico. We had ninety minutes to create something…

I decided to rip the fabrics into strips and weave them together, stitching them onto the calico. The darker green patterned fabric was a little bright so I turned it over and used the back. Once I had arranged them all, pieced in places as some lengths were too short, I pinned them onto the calico and stitched a simple back-stitch round to secure everything.

I decided to couch a variegated thread in a circle. I started with the green button in the middle and then just kept going, stitching the buttons as I went a long.

In true Sewing Bee fashion we had regular timing updates…’you’ve got 30 minutes left’…at which point we negotiated unanimously to extend the time by 30 minutes! Everyone entered into the spirit of the challenge, no one went to make coffee or have a comfort break – we were too busy stitching!

I was pretty pleased with mine, it reminded me of the rings of a tree. After we’d finished we gathered them all together, it was amazing how different everyone’s was, we’d all started with identical packs and ended up with a wide variety of ideas. To see all the other entries please follow the link to Skipton Stitchers blog.

If anyone is in a stitching group, I can recommend it as a meeting idea, it was great fun.