The Big BEE Sewing Club

I don’t know if I’ve posted one this already but if even if I have it deserves another outing!

Cute little coin purse made from a remnant of fabric using a reclaimed zip. It may be a tiny little thing but there were many skills to learn - shortening a zip, sewing a lined pouch in one piece, turning it out and ladder stitch to close the opening at the end.

Getting top hem and handle positions just right on this bag at Friday sewing club. This fabric was a nightmare for fraying but with patience, a lot of patience, it was defeated!

White linen trousers are perfect for this weather aren’t they?

This pair were finished by a sewer at Friday sewing club last week.

Anyone know where the photos I took at Friday sewing club this week have gone? I seem to have lost them 😢

Here are some photos of beautiful patchwork table mats from last week’s club. The sewer who made these hadn’t sewn a thing just over a year ago - look how far they’ve come!

This is the club’s spread in ‘One More Time Around’ all about why I started the Big BEE Sewing Club in the first place (but skipping the whole history of the name from it’s Plain English Sewing origins 😜 - I can give you the whole history if you want).

Please do go and check out the whole magazine on the Up-Cycled Cloth Collective website - the website should come up on google, there are loads of fabulous UK upcyclers featured and some useful articles on getting started in textile upcycling.

Just a few hints at some of the projects being worked on at Friday sewing club. Stay tuned for more details!

You can join us any time, well anytime on a Friday between 11 and 3 that is. Tesco, Jennison Street, Bulwell, NG6 - what’s stopping you? 😜❤️

Yesterday at sewing club (the one at Tesco, Bulwell 😄) I was chatting to some of the others about my cancer, chemo and Covid then recovery and I estimated that it was ‘only about 2 years’ since I started feeling like me again. Then this turned up on my memories today.

Wasn’t far off was I? 😄

The treatment for my cancer took 1 year, that’s what I’d been told about and expected so all good. And that’s what everyone talks about - the treatment. Nobody talked to me about the recovery from the treatment. Especially not the recovery from the mental impact of the illness and then the treatment together. I had a global pandemic, lock downs and the impact of those on me and my family to contend with at the same time so looking back it’s not surprising I ended up terrified to even leave my house but still nobody had talked to me about recovery from cancer treatment.

In fact I clearly recall one supporter talking to one of my children who was struggling with my diagnosis telling us it would be “a difficult year but then mum will be all better”. If my child took that at face value it probably contributed to the hard time they had dealing with it all too!

Physical recovery took another year to just get to ‘as good as it’s going to get’ stage. Mental recovery took another year after that to get to the point where I could even start to contemplate a future, and a year on from that we have this post. 4 and a bit years from diagnosis to starting to get back to me!

I will never again be how I was before it started, chemo left me with awful neuropathy and horrendous tinnitus and the arthritis that was starting to be a problem before diagnosis but ‘went away’* during treatment came back with a vengeance and is far worse now, my energy levels are non existent, I’m in constant pain and, and, and. . . that’s enough already, you don’t want to hear the whole list of my health problems and complaints 😂

I still struggle at times with my mental health as well and I very rarely leave the house alone but doing so no longer terrifies me, I just need help physically moving stuff now 😂



* no it didn’t go away at all, all the steroids they pumped me with just hid it while it carried on getting worse.

The sun may have vanished for now but it will come back so I’m planning some nice new tops. I’ve been living in t-shirts I can hide in since my surgery but I’m getting my confidence back now (thanks to Marks and Spencer foam prosthetics believe it or not, far better than my NHS one!) and want something a bit nicer. But I still want stretch and comfort 😀.

So going in the machine today are these from Pound Fabrics, a gorgeous broderie anglais, cotton jersey and a cute corgi print cotton, from which I will make jersey backed tops that combine a bit of style with the comfort of a t-shirt.

Remember me saying I’d been busy working on something? Well here it is - the UK edition of ‘One More Time Around’, the magazine of The Up-Cycled Cloth Collective compiled and edited by yours truly. I might even have written a few of the bits in it too. And taken some of the photos.

I loved doing it too!❤️❤️❤️ took me back to the days when I helped put the student union magazine together, DTP software’s got a bit better since then though 😂. The DTP we had then was better than the system we’d put the school magazine together with, that had involved typewriters, scissors and lots of Pritt stick glue! The old on paper way didn’t make my shoulders hurt as much though so maybe it’s not so bad.

I’ll post links to where you can read the whole magazine in the comments, purely because I forgot to get them before I started typing this 😜