Hello. My name is Annie and I'm from Australia and stumbled on this website. I've been knitting, crocheting, embroidering and tatting since I've been 5 years old. I was taught by my mother and grandmother who are (Mum) and were (Nanny) fantastic seamstresses. My Mum retired a few years ago and took up patchworking and is so good at it that she has taken out a few show championships. Her work is just simply exquisite. Which led me to wonder if I could do patchworking but without the machine as I don't like sewing machines. I thought "well they used to do it hundreds of years ago and didn't have machines" so thought I'd give it a go. I found a lovely lady at a sewing shop who is mentoring me and I've found a wonderful new craft hobby. I started doing a backstitch for my design (which is just a simple dresden design) but then found out that a running stitch is better so have been doing that. I'm up to appliqueing my dresdens onto a backing by a blanket stitch. It's going very well. To be honest you wouldn't be able to tell that it wasn't machined sewed. Anyway just thought I'd share my thoughts. I loved reading everyone elses thoughts. Take care patchworkers.