Our post is still recovering from the bad bad postal strike over here (I may have mentioned this!), so mail is still quite a rarity. I got home on Tuesday to:

Stitch magazine, full of lots of fab Christmas ideas for me to read about and never get round to!

A letter from Thameswater saying they owe us £40

and a lovely letter from a lady I sent a bookmark to in a recent swap and she sent me this lovely mini quilt as a thank you! Unfortunately I can’t read her blog address in the letter she sent.. so if it’s you, please leave a comment!!

Randomly in my favourite blue

So there you go a happy mail day!

Today I got a phone bill - I’ll open it tomorrow!

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…

Hectic couple of weeks!

We’ve been waiting for a new white box to arrive before photographing anything new - so I have lots stored up to share! We currently have one of these which is great, but takes up lots of room - in a 1 bed flat space saving is essential!

I’ve been up in Barnsley wedding planning - under 7 months now!!

Rehearsing for Trial by Jury Supersized which is this Thursday!!

Had a very good guild meeting on Saturday - photos to follow when we get the tent thing!!

And I finally got my copy of amy butler’s In Stitches!

There is football on TV to occupy Duncan and I just discovered lots of eye candy over at the In Stitches Flickr group! Looks like a good night of drooling

A themed round up today…

Patchwork pincushion over at Creative Kismet.

Rubblework Scarf tutorial to be bought at Pink Chalk Studio, more patchwork scarves at funky and delightful

Patchwork coasters and a new blog for my list! Thanks SewMammaSew!.

Inchies for swaps and general cuteness

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!

I didn’t really expect to see so much movement within My big list of sewing blogs, certainly not so quickly - but 43 blogs have had an increase in their Technorati score in the last week.

The reason I realised was Sew Mama Sew moved up into the top 5. It’s obviously been a good week for them as they also made the top 1000 blogs on bloglines! I’m guessing the main reason for all this activity is the Handmade holidays series they’re running- a set of themed tutorials for Christmas gifts everyday throughout November. It’s certainly how I found the blog and I’m now fully subscribed..

New blogs on the list this week include some fab eye candy and beautiful fabric from Pink Lemonade Boutique, Indigo Blue and Arty Lady’s blog.

If you’re on the list why not show off with a badge, if you’re not on the list please leave a comment or email me..

I got my first commission last week, a friend received an ipod touch for his birthday, and wanted a sock to help keep the ipod looking new and shiny.

The embroidery is the Distilled logo. The time spent on the embroidery for the logo really makes the sock special. Adding a bit of embellishment quickly turns a fairly simple design into something unique.

With Christmas coming up this would make a great gift to go with an ipod. The sock itself is quite simple to make. No matter what size of ipod you have you can follow the same plan. I’ve designed this tutorial to help you size the sock to fit your own MP3 player..

1. Cut out a piece of material that wraps around your ipod - leave plenty of extra material around the ipod as we’ll trim the excess later. I used denim for this one and a piece of stiff waterproof material for the example above. If you have it, try to find a relatively stiff piece of material, as this will keep its shape much better.

2. Either hem the top of the material or trim with ribbon. Trimming with ribbon is a great way to add a bit more style and enables you to come up with some creative designs. Try keeping the sock a plain material and adding a thin strip of your favourite material.

If you’re going to add some embroidery, do it at this point before sewing up the sock - be sure to mark the bottom and sides of the ipod with pins so you know how much space you have to work in.

3. Place the ipod on the material and mark the edges with pins. Machine or hand stitch the bottom and side to make a snug fit.

4. Make sure the ipod fits in OK and adjust the sides if necessary (!) Once you’re happy with the fit, trim any excess material.

5. Turn sock the right way round and enjoy!

This is one I added embroidery to, quite a simple design can have a great effect - I’m really pleased with it!

Let me know how you get on and send me a link to any photos!

Thanks to Susan D for sending me the following links to be added to the Big List of Sewing Blogs:

Art of textiles and Art of stitch Both are sites recording Susan’s beautiful embroidery, and following her progress through a City and Guilds course..

I also stumbled across i have to say yesterday, when looking through a list of links to tutorials, which I can’t find anymore, but think it was on whip up. The tutorials on this site look really easy to follow, I’m certainly going to try the band of colour tute!

and a search for sewing blogs turned up the wittily named Behind the Seams!

I’m very excited to announce the launch of

This list is a collection of all the sewing and craft blogs that I currently subscribe to. Over the next few weeks with your help I’d like to turn this list into a list of ALL the sewing and craft blogs that are out there. When you spot one I haven’t included, please leave a comment on this post and I’ll try to get them added.

For each blog on the list I have (with the help of Duncan) looked up their rank on the Technorati Api. This score is then used to rank the blogs. *

Currently heading the list are the following blogs…

1. angry chicken 1,470
2. not martha 2,749
3. whip up 3,017
4. HELLO my name is Heather 6,661
5. SouleMama 8,678

I’ve created a badge for you to put on your website’s to tell your readers you’re listed on the Big List of Sewing Blogs I will be updating the scores about once a week, so please bookmark this list, and check back regularly…

• There are a couple of blogs on the list which for some reason didn’t get a score. However I wanted to get the list live, so I’ll try and fix those over the next few days