Extreme Patchworking Tutorial

Okay... Turns out it's not called "Extreme Patchworking". It's called "Cathedral Windows". There's a fabulous tutorial here . Thanks very much to Louise for sharing that. This is the way I did it, I'm making a little make-up bag. Feel free to give it a go and share your finished products!

1. Start by cutting 24 8cm squares. Fold square in half and sew up the sides as pictured.

2. Bring the ends of the sewn seams together and sew the opposite sides together, leaving a small opening so you can turn it out.

3. Turn it right side out and fold the opening in so that it can't be seen. Don't worry about sewing it back up, it will be turned under later on. I would suggest not doing your opening in either of the corners or in the centre-those bits are quite important geometrically...

4. Iron your squares down. Your iron is your friend with this project.

5. This is where it gets quite fun and foldy. Take your newly ironed squares and bring the corners to the centre, making a new, smaller square.

6. Sew the corners down to the centre with a couple of tiny stitches.

7. Sew your squares together, using tiny slip stitches . Each side of the make-up case comprises of 3 rows of 4 squares.

8. Make the "Windows" by folding back the edges of the cross-folds and carefully stitching down. They naturally make that lovely curved shape with hardly any coaxing.

9. Sew in your zip and there you have it! The pros of the project so far are-great for using up small pieces of fabric, it's fun folding and manipulating the fabric and the result is very textural and interesting, and you don't need any lining. Cons are-very very fiddly, and you have to keep your stitches so neat and tiny, but still very enjoyable and worthwhile and definitely much simpler than it looks! Happy stitching xx