First Love

It's ok, this is not going to be a slushy post about Valentine's Day, it's about my first crafty love: my sewing machine. These days, I mainly crochet. It's more convenient. You can't take a sewing machine on public transport/in the car/to the park and expect to get much done. You can of course take your sewing machine around with you, if you like, but if that's what you're doing, you might have taken the 'love' thing a bit literally - go get help!

Not so long ago, I bought a mini sewing machine from John Lewis. It's beautiful. I adore it. Yes, it's small. Yes, it only has one speed, and yes, you can't sew heavy fabric on it, but for little bits and pieces, it's brilliant. The only down side is that it doesn't have a cover. As it doesn't have any obvious bits to open and drop a splodge of oil into like Old Faithful does, I've been worried about dust getting in and generally clogging it up, so I decided to make it a little hat. I bought some nice spotty oilcloth before Christmas and some red bias binding and...

It looks a bit crumpled, but it just needs a spell out in the sunshine to flatten those creases. It's got nicely taped seams on the inside, which look very smart (sorry, I forgot to take a pic of that bit) and an optimistic pocket on the front for the instruction booklet which I have already lost. I'm sort of tempted to paint corresponding red dots on Old Faithful now!

There's loads of oilcloth left too, so I'm considering making more and adding them to Eidelweiss, what do we think?