We are recording today on the traditional, ancestral, and unseeded territories of the Coast Salish and Quakwakwakwak peoples, including Slaiwitou, Squamish, Musquiam, and Comox First Nations.

Hello and welcome to Love to Sew. I'm Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics and BF Patterns.

And I'm Helen, the designer behind Helen's closet patterns and Cedar Quilt Co.

We're two sewing buds who love to sew and it's essentially all we want to talk about.

This week we're interviewing Maddie Ballard, author of Patchwork, a sewist diary.

We chat with her about learning to sew during the pandemic, connecting to her roots through

her projects, and transforming painful moments into beautiful work. If you love to sew,

this is your show.

Hello, Maddie. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Oh, we can't wait to chat with you. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

I sure can. So my name is Maddie Bellard, and I'm a sewist and writer of mixed Chinese heritage from Al-Therro, New Zealand.

And I currently live in Melbourne, Australia.

Amazing. And we are so excited to talk to you about your book today. But let's just start off with

a little bit about your sewing journey. Can you tell us how and when you learn to sew?

I sure can. So I think like many sewists, I learned to sew during the pandemic. So my partner at the time and I had just moved back to New Zealand from London. And we were living with his parents in this very small town called New Plymouth. I didn't really know anyone in New Plymouth. I didn't have a job. He was working part time. And so I sort of had a bit of a loose end. And I guess like lots of people during the pandemic, I was feeling, I guess, just like quite anxious and a bit stuck and looking for something to do. And his mother happened to have this really old sewing machine that she had, I think, inherited from her mother. And she sort of said, why don't you have a go? And so I had a go and I loved it. I feel like, yeah, the first time I ever used that sewing machine, which was this really clunky kind of temperamental model, I just had a great time. And I think the first thing I did was a hemmed atop. And I was like, wow, that feels like a superpower. So I kept going with it. Amazing. Thank goodness for all the people out there handing sewing machines off to other folks and being like, why don't you have a go? Just try it. Maybe you'll love it. I know we have a lot of listeners who also learn to sew during the pandemic, and we were wondering what you think sewing offered people during that time. Oh my gosh. I mean, I think a lot of it is just that it was something to do, right? Like I feel like a lot of people were kind of at a loose end. And sewing is, as I think we all know, a great time suck. I feel like learning any new skill, you need time at the beginning to kind of build your skill set up. And so it just happened to be quite a convenient time to do that, I think. But I guess there was also this element that for me, certainly, it felt like sewing kind of provided this illusion of control, maybe. It felt like the whole world was kind of in the midst of lots of chaos, and it feels like you don't have a lot of control during that situation. But you can sort of tell yourself, oh, like if I sew this seam, eventually I will have this garment. And I think that was kind of a really reassuring big picture

thing that was going on with sewing. Yeah, that really makes a little sense. I think a lot of our

listeners are going to relate to that. And your book kind of starts out during the pandemic. So

let's talk about it. We absolutely loved your book. It's called Patchwork, a sewist diary in the most recent US release,

and bound a memoir of making and remaking in the UK release. And it's about your sewing journey

and all of the life stuff that kind of weaves in and out of it. We thought maybe before we get

into asking you questions about the book, we were wondering if you would read an excerpt so that our

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