A Little Cushion

I feel comfortable enough with my knitting skills and obsession to be a self proclaimed "knitter", if you will.  I can understand patterns, read symbol craft and yarn labels, etc.  Sewing, however, is not quite the same.  I have a machine and have made garments, but really, I'm very elementary.  After being inspired by the Seam Allowance Club at A Verb for Keeping Warm, I had another light bulb moment.  I'm still learning.  I need to sew a lot of straight lines before I'm comfortable.  I need to make things from patterns.   I need to plain old practice!  I guess I felt that I should be able to just do it without paying the sewing practice dues.  I mean, not many knitters start with a fair isle yoked sweater with a steek, right!  Then where does it say it is my business to decide to sew and immediately do it well.  With knitting, I made a lot of scarves, a lot of scarves.  So I need to just put in the sewing machine time.  Once I really let all of that sink in.  I felt great. 

Still inspired, but also relaxed with my new self allowed room for growth, I resolved to sew simply to start.  When I get to a hard part, I set it aside in the pile of "get help with the expert, aka Mom" and am OK with that.  So a few nights ago, Instead of spending the evening knitting as usual, I went ahead and spend it in class.  I pulled a wool scarf from the stack, dug out the quilt batting & tin of bindings and trip and started playing.  Playing with color, thread, pattern, until I decided on a combination I liked and decided to make my awesome workbench stool a cushion.  I used an old dress pattern piece and traced around the chair seat, allowing for about 1" of seam allowance.  Then I set to work slowly sewing.  I ripped out some seams, speed right through others, and at the end of my evening, I had this.

It is not perfect.  But to me, and as a learning project, I couldn't be happier.  I gave myself room for mistakes, and calmly corrected them when the inevitable happened.  It was a successful evening and I am encouraged to try again soon!  In the mean time, my butt is really enjoying a soft place to rest as I sit at the workbench!