Let out on an afternoon break for good behaviour...

Mainly because my brain is about to turn to mush and ooze out my ears.

Not sure how I'm tracking towards being finished on time, especially as I spent the first 40 minutes of my morning clearing off the workbench in my study (should have done that last night!) and trying to work out where we'd tucked my box of embroidery threads during October's manic cleanup before The Collectors came...

It was about this stage when I realised I may well have bitten off more than I can chew as I don't think I've actually done any applique before and the only thing I know about machine embroidery is from a 1926 book I bought at Lifeline Bookfair and a library book I borrowed last week:
There was only one thing for it. I took a deep breath and I started working out what I needed to do...

(Keeping fingers mentally well crossed)I decided the best approach was probably to do the more straight-forward parts for each page then go back and work out the trickier bits when I felt more confident.

For each page there was planningtracing bonding and/ or pinningand back to planning!Around lunchtime I thought I should make a test piece and check stuff like how easy it is to stitch through bonded blanket and felt, if fabric markers work on felt and if my machine was able to do machine embroidery. The answers were pretty easy, yes, but they need to be heat set before you sew around anything you've coloured in and yes (but I can't work out how to bring the bobbin thread through on the first stitch so it's off the menu for now. But I played with what I could manage using the machine normally...)And I realised I actually don't care if I get this finished in time, it's fabulous just having the time and energy to craft!