Goodness this was a challenge. I’ve made clothes for most of my teenage and young adult life, so I was very unchallenged by this week’s challenge.

Then I thought, hang on you don’t applique, or embroider and you’ve got jeans that need “repair” (according to my Aunt at least).

Now that’s a challenge!

I also had doilies I had been collecting to do “something” with. Finding them was a challenge as well.

Trawling the internet, and Pintrest I found a number of ideas to try – probably too many. Lol. I chose to do reverse applique, a bunch of random stitches, and try out Sashiko, the Japanese form of decorative repair.

As you can see from the photos, I met with varying success attempting embroidery. It may have been a step too far to try and embroider and reverse applique dolies with such random holes.

By far the most successful was the round hole that I trimmed down and used a small doilie. I have fallen in love with Sashiko and will need to find more places to use it. It’s a bit like a labeller for me, I want to sashiko everything now!!

I also got to learn French knots and am on the way to being fairly successful with them. My back stitch needs more practise, I struggle to keep it straight!

I’m sure I’ll have ample scope for practise as a lot of my clothes are aging – and I can only fit into a select few at the moment.

The next lot are going to have sashiko on top of regular applique!