I made this! - Birdy Pouch

This is my first post showing my own creations!

Have posted these already on my flickr page and some on the livingetc sewing forum and have received a good response so I wanted to show off my favourite pieces on here - plus a few tips for fellow sewing newbies who like me spend hours trawling online tutorials for tips and tricks!

This first piece was really just an experiment to use up some smaller pieces of fabrics and to make use of this lovely lime green polka dot cotton from Moda which had arrived in the post that day from Mr Ebay.

I now use this to hold my sewing machine pedal and cable when I travel with my machine - nice to make things that serve a purpose!

Found a revelation regarding appliqué (one of my favourite techniques) - I'm sure most of you know this already - but for those who don't . . .

• My big tip is not to cut out your shape then stitch over the edge (unless you are handstitching of course). I tried this to start with but it is almost impossible to do and looked awful.
  
• Instead lightly sketch your pattern in pencil onto the face of the appliqué fabric - make this slightly larger than you want it to be.
• Pin your appliqué fabric onto your base fabric (for my bird I only used a couple of pins in the middle - just to hold the fabric steady - I kept these in whilst sewing as they were not in the way).
• Position your needle at a corner - I found this better than on an obvious line (just in case you don't meet up exactly at the end!)
• Select a zig zag stitch and make your stitch quite wide but very short - this will create the dense ridge of stitching - and will securely hold most frays.(Practise on a scrap first).
  
• Will be different with every machine but with mine I had to pull my fabric through a little harder than normal to avoid too many tangled messes underneath! Use a slow setting also, and stop every now and then to make sure you appliqué fabric is staying flat and isn't stretching.
• Once you have stitched around the whole shape use either a small pair of sharp scissors or snips to cut off the excess fabric - taking care not to cut your base fabric or the stitching. You can go in as close as you like - some people like to leave a frayed seam (approx 5mm) but I like it all trimmed off - looks neater and crisper.
• Et voilá you have quite professional looking appliqué!!
  

Hope this info helps - leave a comment if you have a go at this.
Happy Appliquéing!!