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.

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!

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!

Sharon Boggon has started a new challenge for the new year - Take It Further.

January’s challenge was to either use the colour scheme suggested or the concept - for January this was someone you look up to. The colour scheme and the wording immediately sparked circus thoughts - looking up to the trapeze artist (!) - there was a nice deep purpley colour that would work well, but I needed more reds..

So then I moved on to people, I actually look up to - my parents were pretty high up the list. My mum is always telling me to aim high, so when I came across the English bird of prey centre when looking for D’s birthday present - I put the 3 ideas together.. Something you look up to, something inspiring..

You’ll need to click on the image to see it properly

The other part of the challenge I really wanted to explore is the concept of taking it further - while this is only a small piece, it’s my first design using silk shading. I used single strands of DMC cottons to ‘colour in’ the hawk.

The February challenge is of course up and running already and it is ‘what are you old enough to remember?’ At the moment I’m leaning towards something sea related/inspired - if you look at the colour pallette there are blues and sandy colours. As a child we used to take the caravan to the seaside for the full 6 week school holiday - it seemed like forever.. I’ll let you know how it works out!

I went to the opus school of textile art’s 10th anniversary exhibition of textile art today. I was one of those bright early spring days, crisp but sunny that suits London so well. The exhibition was at the Mall Galleries just south of Trafalgar Square - lovely looking cafe if you’re passing, but too busy today for me to find a table for a coffee.

Unfortunately I hadn’t thought to take a camera, but there was some amazing stuff - a real mixture, from felting to little people in boots The only photos I can find online are the flier picture, which has a 3-d mix media piece by Gavin Fry and this blog post from altering thoughts, which shows some experimentation inspired by one of the pieces in the exhbition.

One of the things I noticed was that it was the landscapes that caught my eye the most - I guess that’s one step closer to discovering my own style!??

A belated happy New Year!

The 9th of January and I’ve only just sat down to blog! There’s one New Year’s resolution I failed with already

My Big List of Sewing Blogs has grown to 96! It’s been great - people have started emailing with their blogs and putting my button on their site (Ta!) - it just has to be sewing related and active to get in, so if you think your blog fits the bill do leave a comment/send me an email!

The best part for me is exploring the new blogs, I particularly enjoyed finding Kimono Reincarnate and Travel, Fibre and Thread - who’s doing some great work on this month’s Take it Further Challenge. (I will be blogging my contribution to this month’s challenge over the weekend!)

I finished my first card of the year yesterday! It’s a birthday card for a friend who played Pitti-Sing in our production of the Mikado this summer:

Click on the thumbnail to read the line of music! I’m not sure how easy it would be to do without the thread showing through from the back - maybe it’s the material I used!?

Thanks Jo !

I’m still playing catch up, but I had a productive afternoon in front of Harrogate Railway vs. Mansfield in the FA cup - as well as spotting my future father-in-law in the crowd (not a huge crowd I have to say!), I also worked my way through lesson two.

I wanted to try all of the stitches Sharon listed, so design wasn’t really a priority - I like the idea of keeping the sampler in my sewing box for inspiration!

I worked my way through the list of stitches:

starting with triple chain stitch butterflies at the bottom

A little pattern with double fly stitch and french knots over on the right

A crown stitch pattern on the left

I played about with some detached chain flowers up at the top

A circle of detached chain in the middle

A whipped long armed chain top right

Tulip stitch up at the top - I made a little man which I think is quite cute!

there’s also some moss and berry stitch on there somewhere

And finally a woven picoult flower which I’m also rather proud of!

I’ll try and get week three’s lesson started this week!

I’ve finally finished my first week of Sharon Boggon’s Personal library of Stitches course!

Inspired by a post oncrafting in public I took some materials with me on a train journey last week. I sat and sewed all the way back to London. It made the journey pass very quickly and I was probably the only one glad it was delayed by half an hour as it allowed me to finish my piece! I also had an interesting conversation with the woman sat next to me, she wanted to learn to knit - I told her about Stitch n Bitch and I hope she gives it a try!!

So onto my sampler - I packed quickly so had to make do with limited resources, but I had a lovely green piece of felt! To begin with I thought I’d just go through the stitches Sharon had detailed in the notes (I didn’t have a stitch dictionary with me) in straight rows - as you can see with the Guilloche stitch and the Portuguese stem stitch - which I’m still not sure I’ve got right! - If anyone can give me some pointers as to why it looks so messy?? I got a bit carried away with the feather stitch and decided it reminded me of a snail and my original plan was to use a chained bar to finish it off, but it just didn’t look right - which is why I just left the long stitches..

It’s not when you actually look at it a huge amount of sewing, but I enjoyed working on felt and I incorporated stranded cotton and 4 different sizes of perle…

After being really busy last week, I’ve had a bit of a quiet one this week. I haven’t been feeling great - I have one of those half colds that won’t fully develop, but has still wiped me out!

It’s the first week of Sharron Boggon’s Personal Library of stitches course, I’ve not managed to produce anything yet but there’ve been some great things created by others in the group here, here and here.

Elsewhere, I love these faces embroidered on pillowcases over at Needle N Thread!

I’m looking forward to the arrival of my copy of Amy Butler’s In Stitches even more since I saw these trousers. Our sorting office in Streatham was apparently the worst effected place in the country - and we’re still feeling the effects of the strike - since seeing those trousers I’m getting more impatient!!

I’m addicted to free rice a fun game, that feeds people - for every right answer they donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations.. Check it out I’ve already expanded my vocabulary and fed people! - The only problem it’s addictive and it’s easy to convince yourself you have to keep playing as it’s doing good!