As promised, this post is going to be a celebration of my clever friends and family. I was so amazed by the thought and creativity that went in the gifts we received for our wedding, but here I would like to highlight the homemade.

Most particular, from my sister of who it could previously have been said wouldn’t know how to thread a needle! She sewed every stitch herself and I am so pleased with it!

From my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law another beautiful sampler - I love the colours in the piece!

My husband’s employee Leonie not only designed our invitations, but also made us this book, it’s embroidered with our initials: DM on the front and SM on the back

Another of Duncan’s employees, Emily is a very clever artist, she gave us this lovely screen print. My photo doesn’t do it justice, I couldn’t get rid of the reflection - there’s some stitch work on this as well..

We also got some lovely homemade cards - I was using a borrowed camera and not all the photos turned out well, but here’s a photo of most of the cards - there are more out of shot..

and in particular ones from my old flat mate Hannah: hannah.jpg

and last but not in the least least a card from my parent’s neighbour, Christine - this is a waterfall card. I hadn’t come across one before, but I’ve just had a quick google and found a tutorial for how to make this type of card.

So many thanks to all!!

A photo that not only shows my lovely new husband, my beautiful dress (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that but I loved my dress!) and THE cake! My mum made the cake for us - the flowers and everything.. I’m so proud of her, I have to admit she took some persuading and really didn’t want the responsibility but I knew she’d do such a wonderful job and it means so much more.. in fact here’s another photo of the cake!

There are more photos over on flickr, so I won’t post any more here - until the official ones come through

We just had the best day - our friends sang beautifully in church, they were really amazing and if I’d known whether the mascara I was wearing was waterproof I’d have been in floods throughout!! Just thinking now I keep thinking of all the little things that happened to make it so special, I guess the main thing was sharing it with friends and family who were just so lovely and supportive.

We also got an amazing selection of homemade gifts and cards which I will be photographing and blogging about - including a surprise sampler from my sister who we jokingly say can’t sew on a button - she certainly proved us all wrong!

Last week we had a few days in the Peak District at a lovely Inn, which did great pub food, lots of good beers and was really well placed for me to go check out a sewing shop in Bakewell They have an online store, Wye needlecraft which I haven’t checked out yet, but if it’s anything like the shop it should be pretty good - they had a great selection of embroidery threads.

Followed by a few days in Madrid, in another lovely hotel right by the Retiro Park.. which is well worth a visit if you’re in Madrid.

Unfortunately, I came home with an ear infection - so normal service won’t resume quite so quickly, I know I have a backlog of blogs built up to add to the list, but I’ll get there eventually!

I hope you all had a happy month of June,

Suzi Morris

The most hectic, stressful and enjoyable week of the year.. and it’s all over!!

I perform with a group called GLOC and we spent the last week living the impossible dream performing Man of La Mancha..

As I’ve been away from the blog and haven’t done any craft or sewing for a few weeks I thought I’d post a photo of me in my costume instead - I played the small role of Fermina the serving girl..

There are more photos of the cast here. I’m voting for doing Seussical the musical next year!!

So today I’m recovering, enjoying the sun and getting ready for the run into the wedding. I’m going to apologize now for the lack of posting and slow service on the big list of sewing blogs over the next few weeks - I’ll be back in business at the beginning of July when we’re back from the wedding and honeymoon..

It looks as though summer is finally arriving! and what better way to celebrate than to spend a lazy morning reading about two quite different but equally inspiring women!

Firstly, a fantastic piece over on Needle’nThread by Trish Burr, split in to parts 1 and two

Trish is author of one of my very favourite embroidery books Redoute’s finest flowers in embroidery. My mum bought it for me a few Christmases ago and I had to buy her a copy of her own for mother’s day in order to get my copy back!

The article is full of …..

Sorry bit of an interruption there - a big cry from the kitchen, Duncan sliced his finger rather than the cucumber.. I did everything right - wrapped the finger tightly in a clean tea towel - got him to apply pressure and hold it above his heart and then I panicked!! I remember now I’m rubbish in an emergency! However, a couple of plasters and control of the remote for the afternoon and I think he’ll live!

Anyway, sorry for the break - check out the piece on Trish’s book - there are some amazing photos - definitely worth taking a peak! - and she talks about how she became interested in embroidery and how she came to write these amazing books.. I’ll almost certainly be ordering her new book! In fact I’ll probably have to get 2 copies!

The second piece is an interview by the lovely Lisa Lam with the inspiring Amy Butler

Amy talks about how she got started and built up the business and has some great advice for people starting out.. I’ll be rereading and taking notes!! But the essence I think was to start simple and focussed with an etsy or ebay store to feel the market out.. which I guess I know, but I’m still experimenting to find my focus and building up the courage to try! - my wedding in 6 weeks time is a good excuse to procrastinate for now!

By the way if you like the look of Amy’s new crockery line at Mikasa (I know I do!) there are some closer photos here.

Sorry folks - I was away for just a few days and had a technical glitch with the list! A few of the blogs disappeared off the list - thankfully it’s all fixed now, but if you spot any more probs - just drop me a line!

I’m often asked how my list of sewing and craft blogs is generated and what the numbers mean so I thought I would try to shed a little light on the matter. Basically it all boils down to magic! Sorry wasn’t that what you wanted to hear?

Firstly, the list has been generated two ways. I added a lot of the blogs that I read on a daily basis which got the list going. Since then people email me asking to be added to the list. I’ve tried to ensure that all the sites I’ve added are blogs that are updated regularly, relatively non commercial and talk about sewing or crafts. I hope this keeps the quality of the list high, and makes it a valuable resource for you. If you aren’t already on the list of sewing blogs, please feel free to email me with your site, and I’ll get you added.

The numbers that are assigned are taken from technorati. They rank blogs based on the number of links from other blogs. I’ll post in future about how you can increase this number. You can read more about this on the technorati blog.

So, the list is hand generated by me (aren’t I good ) but the score is based on technorati.

If you have any questions please leave a comment. If you are on the list and haven’t already added a sewing badge, I would certainly appreciate you helping me spread the word (and increase my technorati rank ). And if you aren’t already listed on the site, then please drop me a line.

Have a good weekend.

A couple of happy birthdays this week!

On Thursday we went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday - we had fancy cocktails at Pigalle in Picadilly where we saw the fabulous a cappella group The Magnets, so this card seemed fitting

and tomorrow we’re heading over to my sister’s for my niece’s Second birthday - I can’t believe she’s growing up - so much so that I went a bit mad with the number two.. babel fish was very useful for this!

I’ve also had a couple of large additions to my stash recently, we have a raffle each month at my Guild meetings. I was lucky enough to win this large bag of tapestry wools - so expect to see a change in my choice of thread..

I was also lucky enough to spot a notice on the intra-net at work offering this stack of Indian silks. The woman giving them away has had them in her loft for 10 years and couldn’t think what to do with them..

I’m not sure what I’ll use this beautiful material for either yet, so if you have any ideas they’ll be very welcome! There are 4 pieces of 2.5 m and the cream silk is 2 m - not sure of the widths..

I am so behind on this and we’re only 3 months into the challenge! With a wedding in 3 months time, it’s only going to get worse.. but here it is:

February’s Challenge was ‘What are old enough to remember?’

My initial thoughts for this were based on childhood memories of summers by the seaside.. and then something happened, something unexpected.. First of all Barnsley beat Liverpool in the FA Cup - which you may have noticed excited me

Now what I remember is standing in the cold, watching Barnsley and generally going home to defrost and cheer ourselves up! and then we drew Chelsea in the Quarter final.. and beat them as well! In the build up to the Chelsea match I saw this article in the Guardian and it brought back so many memories of past glories and randomly my next thought was that’s what I remember, I should do some thing that’s Barnsley..

and you don’t get more Barnsley than Toby Tyke!

Obviously this isn’t something I’ve drawn myself, but converting a picture to embroidery is challenging in itself! Onwards now onto March.. noticing the small things in life, I have an idea for this - I might go microscopic and use some of the very large bag of tapestry wool which I was lucky enough to win at the Embroiderer’s guild last month!

Well hello!

That was a longer break than expected! Though fear not I have been busy… Here are some of the fruits of my labours:

75 Wedding invitations - a bit of a group effort!

• Designed by Leonie, graphic designer at D’s firm.
• Chopped glued and beribboned by me, Duncan and my mother-in-law-elect.
• Written by my sister, Judith (aided by my brother-in-law watching the kids!).
• Folded, and stuffed into envelopes by me and Duncan
• Then a collective gathering of addresses to send them all out.. the last two are sat waiting to go tomorrow morning..

While I haven’t been blogging, I’ve still been receiving lots of lovely blogs to add to my list of sewing and craft blogs. It currently stands at 205 and is steadily growing. It’s amazing to see the increase in traffic from being mentioned by another blog - I’ve become a bit addicted to Google Analytics!

I’ve gotten further with my knitting:

this is how it was - it now goes all the way around my neck (just!)

I finally did my TIF challenge for February, which will get it’s own post..

But for the most part we’ve been concentrating on the wedding planning, we have one major decision left to make - the first dance! Any suggestions would be very welcome! I’m not sure my dancing skills are up to doing something like this. Make sure you watch until at least 45 seconds.. I promise it is worth it

Don’t forget it’s Mother’s Day here in the UK this Sunday!

My Mum and future Mother-in-law will be getting lovely Paperchase cards this year.. I have 75 more wedding invites to make and a scarf to knit, so am afraid for me it fell by the wayside. My colleague’s Mum and Mum-in-law will be getting Suzical cards, however - Sarah liked the Mole card so much she asked me to make some more..

A hyacinth for her mother-in-law (as her name means Hyacinth in french!)

and a daffodil for Sarah’s mum:

Which I particularly proud of as my drawing is not the best!

We have D’s Mum visiting for the weekend and are all going up to my sister’s for dinner on Sunday - to see my parents and Judith’s in-laws as well. Happy Mother’s Day to all you great Mum’s - hope you’re spoilt this weekend!

I recently finished reading The friday night knitting club for the second time since Christmas - not something I do very often with a book, but I really enjoyed it. Interestingly opinions seem to be divided over at Amazon - so I guess read it and see or wait for the up coming film with Julia Roberts (who knits in real life) playing the lead character Georgia.

I for one was inspired to pick up some needles after 18 years and re-learn to knit:

and I have to say, so far, I’m doing a lot better than the square I knitted when I was in Guides - it was a holey mis-shapen thing, that my family have not let me forget!!

I’m starting simple and making a (quite wide!) scarf in garter stitch.. What do you think so far? Would I be able to hold my head up in a knitting circle??