First machine sewing project

I bought a sewing machine. Actually, according to my Flickr photostream, it happened a month ago; but last weekend I finally started my first sewing (and second embroidery) project and finished it on Thursday.
Even while making this simple coin purse I learned a lot. I guess there is no substitute for learning by doing, but to prevent myself from making too many silly mistakes I will be grateful for any sewing book recommendations. I have two books titled Complete Sewing Course (one mine, one from the library), but the amount of the information in them is overwhelming. I would prefer something that teaches some basic skills in small chunks with lots of projects for each skill set. Our library recently upgraded their computer system and the side benefit was that now they link to the large number of other libraries and I can reserve books from any of them for free to be delivered to my local library. So lately I was able to find almost anything I wanted to read.

Enjoying embroidery

Once while looking at the marks made by my daughter I saw a bird, so I grabbed a green crayon and traced the seen outline directly over her marks.

I was very excited at the result, because I knew that if I tried to sketch a bird from life or draw one from the memory, unable to simplify, I would get horribly lost in the small details. Therefore I wanted to use this drawing for something.

While in Japan I saw embroidered buttons and brooches with the embroidered centres and lacy/crocheted outer. I also bought some lovely linen fabric.

On my return after looking at PurlBee's tutorial I made three buttons: bigger one is 29 mm and smaller ones are 23 mm in diameter.


For now I don’t have any plans for them, but this was the first embroidery project that I enjoyed doing. All the previous ones were way beyond my skill level and therefore ended up in frustration.