Have Your Say

A Little R & R

This week we’re sharing a little R & R through Have Your Say, and not just through the rest and recreation we hope it brings, but with a little recipe and a resolution!

Once again, Jane has opened the pages of her stitching ‘cookbook’ to share another recipe. This time her needle and thread are the ingredients for a Sashiko inspired ‘dish’.

If you have a pattern you would like to stitch with Sashiko but don’t have a stencil to use the prick and pounce transfer method, or have a stencil but find your chalk design disappears before your sewing is complete, Jane’s transfer method might just be the solution you’re looking for!

A Recipe to Transfer any Picture or Pattern for Sashiko

Materials

• Sheer Weight Iron-on Interfacing
• Pen
• Iron
• A Quilting Stencil or Photocopied Pattern (sized for your fabric)
• Sashiko Thread

Method

1. Transfer your pattern to the side of the interfacing without the glue. If using a quilt stencil, trace it on the interfacing with your pen. If using a photocopy, use a light box or tape your photocopy to a window, secure the interfacing over the image and trace it onto the interfacing

2. Iron the interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric. I find that aside from this being a foolproof method of transfer, the interfacing makes the fabric much easier to stitch on. You will now stitch the design on the interfacing on the back of the fabric.  I do, however, often flip the fabric over to check how the front looks!

3. The Sashiko piece can now become a pillow, quilt, tote, or anything you choose, and all without you having felt repeatedly frustrated trying to retrace the disappearing pattern before you were able to complete the entire design!

Jane’s Completed ‘Recipe’

Jane, it would seem there’s no end to your recipe repertoire! As always, we appreciate you taking the time to share this recipe with us.

In All Stitched Up! issue #365 we shared some thoughts about New Year’s Resolutions, why they often fail and how considering our ‘why’ might just help keep us on track.

In response, Lalah wrote in with a resolution we might all just be able to keep.

‘Ah yes, good old New Year’s resolutions! I faithfully made them from childhood until I hit seventy, but that year I realised I kept making them, but never managed to keep them.

So, I made a resolution never to make another New Year's resolution.

And, would you believe, I have kept that one for eighteen years! Every New Year’s Eve when friends are talking about what they are going to resolve to do for the year, I just smile and say I am keeping an old one.

It is a great feeling of accomplishment to finally know I have fulfilled one resolution and that I can now forget the close to seventy that I didn’t fulfill.’

Lalah, we can hear the relief in your words, and suspect that the pressure you’ve taken off yourself to keep resolutions each year might just mean you’ve achieved more over the last 18 years than you ever thought possible!