Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter

I bought my sewing machine early last year and found it rather intimidating. My only previous experience was when someone gave me a beautiful old singer machine when I was 21 and broke. I lived in a funny little ground floor flat in Glasgow which was so damp that slugs shared the flat leaving slimy trails allover the carpets and any clothes left on the floor. After a couple of months some local druggies broke in and stole just about everything in the flat including half full bottles of shampoo and of course my sewing machine. I had no insurance but also I didn't have many possessions so I wasn't too upset but my poor flatmate had his entire record collection stolen which he found devastating. Anyhow that brought my sewing to a immediate stop.

So fast forward to 2008 when my beautiful new Janome machine arrived. I'd completely forgotten about spool thread so I spent some time pouring over the manual before I could even thread it. I bought the machine with the idea of making adjustments to clothes and that kind of thing but once I started looking around on the internet and in bookshops I realised that I was more interested in the home decor side of sewing especially because you can get such gorgeous fabrics at the moment.

The first book I bought was Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter. Some of the projects are VERY simple, for example one of the projects is for kitchen towels and I think that even I would never actually need instructions on how to hem a piece of fabric! Also there is a pattern for picnic placemats which are pretty much the same as the kitchen towel! I would classify those patterns as being suitable for brain dead zombies however the remainder of the patterns are more at a beginner standard. She uses absolutely wonderful fabrics and the photography is beautiful in a Scandinavian style. I made some oven gloves using a pattern from the book & Kaffe Fasset fabric.



The gloves are lined with fabric but as far as I could make out from the instructions all of the raw ends of the fabric were visible on the inside. When I made the second glove I didn't follow the instructions and hid the raw edges. I think as a beginner when you try a project you want to learn some finishing techniques so I was a bit disappointed with the instructions. Other than that the gloves are lovely and look very nice from the outside. When I used them for the first time I was nervous I would end up with 3rd degree burns but they do work.

I do like this book because it looks so good and is useful for finding inspiration. It has some other cool patterns such as a reversible apron and tote bags plus a cool hat with a quilted rim. You never know, I might even make some kitchen towels from it!