Almost Gave Up

"Patchwork, Please!", a book by Ayumi Takahashi that is full of lovely and inspiring projects. I bought it because I wanted to make "You've Got Mail Wall Pocket" or to be more precise to play around with the paper pieced envelope blocks and try out some other interesting ideas.

I kept looking at the diamond placemat for a while and a few days ago I decided to give it a go. I am bad at reading and following instructions, I have no patience whatsoever. As always, I simply printed out the template for the diamond block and tried the patchwork. But only after two diamonds I gave up, I felt like it was too challenging and too difficult. I will blame the hot weather on that morning. Hehe...

When these two diamonds were ready, I had to use them somehow, I could not leave them for better times. So I made a tiny (less than half of the original size) placemat. Good enough for an afternoon cup of tea in a company of a good book or a magazine.

I used two shades of linen for the base, added a few lazy daisies, running stitches around the diamonds. The label with the green button made a perfect match for this mat, so as the cotton ribbon with tiny flowers. For the back of the mat I used the same purple with white polka dots cotton.

The funny thing is that once the mat was ready, I fell in love with it and with the diamond patchwork. I even felt a bit sorry that I didn't finish all four diamonds. But on the other hand I am glad that I made my own version that I like and it will give me more encouragement for my next attempt at this patchwork. I almost gave up but not completely and that's a happy thing. Happy days everybody! Larisa xox

Note: This post was written in February but only now I got a chance to finish and publish it.