A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of hosting a free motion embroidery workshop for four lovely ladies who, very grudgingly, allowed me to take just one photo of them!

The workshop was a birthday present for the lady on the far right and, apart from the sewing, included lots of lovely tapas-style food and prosecco – not a good combination and, yes, one glass did get knocked over on the table!

None of them had ever attempted this type of machine sewing before but, after giving them a run through of the basics and a demonstration, they all managed to accomplish a few little samples.

If I remember correctly, the lady who created the brilliant musical notes below doesn’t even own a sewing machine!

About an hour in and after much laughter and false starts, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves and got the hang of it – I love these seed heads.

My advice was to keep it simple to begin with and make sure the backing fabric isn’t too small to manoeuvre under the needle.

All the ladies said they thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and could see how addictive it could become.

I have dabbled a little, myself, with free motion embroidery, with things like this: –

But what I would REALLY love to do is something as fabulous as this! (image courtesy of DaysInDesign).

A course with Katie Essam is top of my wishlist right now…..