Martin Lewis Portrait, Free Embroidery Pattern

Stitch a portrait of Martin Lewis with my latest free embroidery pattern! 

I shared a free "WWMLD"  ("What Would Martin Lewis Do?") embroidery pattern last month, inspired by everyone’s favourite money-saving expert. 

I love Martin Lewis and his no-nonsense advice about financial matters, and as bills and other prices have been sky-rocketing I've been thinking "What Would Martin Lewis Do?" a lot... and I just couldn't resist turning that into a craft project.

 

When I was sketching ideas for the pattern, I drew a little portrait of Martin because portraits are something I'm trying to challenge myself to do more of (gotta keep trying new things and stretching yourself creatively!)

I was quite pleased with how the sketch turned out and planned to share a pair of WWMLD patterns (one with simple text, the other this portrait version)... and then I had an attack of self doubt and decided the portrait was terrible and no-one would want to stitch it anyway so what was the point in sharing it - UGH!

And now...? 

Well, I've decided that January Laura was being too hard on herself and needs to learn to share her work even if it's not "perfect" - because that's an important part of creative development. 

And maybe people WILL want to stitch this (or just print it out and put it up on the wall) as a little reminder to make sensible financial choices, or to resist the urge to turn the heating up! 

Feel the creative fear and do it anyway, right??

Happy stitching, pals xx

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE MARTIN LEWIS PORTRAIT PATTERN

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE WWMLD PATTERN 

These patterns are for personal use only: you can use them to stitch as many  as you want for yourself or as gifts, but please don't make any for sale. Thanks xx

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Book Review: Craft a Life You Love

My Book Week continues today with a look at Craft a Life You Love: infusing creativity, fun & intention into your everyday by Amy Tan, aka Amy Tangerine.

Amy self-published Craft a Life You Love last year, and this revised and expanded edition has now been published by Abrams Books. This isn't a "how to" craft book or a "grow your creative business!" book, but is instead essentially a self-help book for people with creative hobbies.

It's about how to find the time and motivation to fit more creative projects into your schedule, and how crafting and creativity can enrich our lives and make us happier. Beyond this, Amy (who seems like an incredibly upbeat, positive person) explores ways in which we can take control of our lives to create "a life you love": being more positive, learning to love ourselves (with all our quirks), and focusing on our priorities and goals.

 

The book is divided into six themed chapters with titles like "Crafting the Soul" and "Crafting Happiness through Habits", then sub-divided into 28 smaller sections. Each section begins with a memoir-like story from Amy's life showing something she's learned, or how she makes use of a certain habit or attitude in her everyday life, and ends with an exercise for you to follow to put the ideas from that section into action.

Most of the exercises involve written prompts for you to think about and respond to, with space for you to write down your responses. For example, there are pages to fill out tracking your daily tasks and how happy they make you, an exercise in rewriting negative thoughts into positive ones, and a list of prompts like "who is someone who gives me tremendous energy and why?" and "what does a perfect day look like?" to get you started on a daily journalling habit.

 

Early on in the book there's also a "permission slip" to sign (to give yourself permission to take time for your hobby to feed your soul) - Amy really believes in the power of writing stuff down!

Because of the workbook-like nature of this book, I'm not sure if this book would be great value if you're not the sort of person who is actually going to sit down and do the exercises suggested. Reading the book from cover-to-cover (which I did, for this review) without following any of the prompts doesn't take that long and you, naturally, skip a lot of blank pages along the way.

 

There's some good, practical advice in here, but some of the stuff about "synchronicity" between Amy and the "naturally benevolent" Universe made me raise my eyebrows and make little frowny faces while reading, and there are a few all-caps comments in my notes like "THIS IS NOT A SIGN FROM THE UNIVERSE, IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE!!!". I am honestly not sure that I have ever read a self-help book in my entire life that didn't cause me to have a few raised-eyebrow moments, though! I am quite cynical at heart (or maybe just British???) and I think I just reach a tipping point where the self-help speak gets a bit much and my internal commentary goes a bit shouty.

At the end of the day, this stuff doesn't make the good advice less good, or the practical tips less useful. Craft a Life You Love might have given me a few shouty all-caps moments, but I also wrote a whole bunch of positive notes while reading and have been thinking a lot about some of the advice in the book.

Overall, I think this would be a great book to work through if you have trouble with confidence (not just creative confidence) and struggle to carve out time for your creative hobbies or other things in your life that bring you joy. I'd also recommend it to people who are feeling a bit "stuck" in their lives and daily routines: you don't have to keep feeling that way, and Craft a Life You Love has a lot of simple but useful tips for making small changes in your thinking and your habits to help you live your best life.

Craft a Life You Love: infusing creativity, fun & intention into your everyday is published by Abrams books. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository and many other websites and bookshops.

I received a free review copy of this book from the publishers. Please note that the Amazon and Book Depository links in this blog post are affiliate links, which means if you click through and make a purchase I get a tiny percentage for the referral. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps support my blog.

P.S. Make sure you check out this week's giveaway - click here to read my review of Mandalas to Embroider, and for your chance to win a copy!

Visit my book reviews archive for a look at lots more crafty books! 

The 100 Day Project 2018: 100 Days of Felt Food

This year's #The100DayProject begins on Tuesday, April 3rd - are you joining in?

The idea of the project is that you pick a creative action, do it every day for a hundred days, and share your progress on Instagram (or elsewhere online) via the main project hashtag and using a unique hashtag for your own project to collect all your pics together.

100 doodles! 100 portraits of cats! 100 photos of flowers! 100 embroidery stitches! 100 paintings of Brutalist architecture! 100 days of potato printing! Small or large, quick or time-consuming, relaxing or challenging, you choose what works for you.

Last year I decided (on a whim and very much at the last minute) to join in for the first time with #100DaysofFeltStuff... and lasted less than a fortnight. It was an amazing thing to be part of, though. I connected with so many awesome makers, learned some really important lessons about my perfectionist tendencies (frustrated tears were shed!) and the pieces I stitched ended up being some of my favourite work that year. 

So, I'm trying again this year with the slightly more focused #100DaysofFeltFood.

I've had fun making felt food in the past (including these felt fruit tutorials and last year's felt Jaffa Cake), and I feel like this topic will give me lots of variety without hitting that "oh gosh I could make anything but what???" panic which I suffered quite a bit of last year.
 
I'm hoping with a bit of planning, I can flex my creative muscles without tearing my hair out and make it all the way through the 100 days this time. Fingers crossed!

I'll be sharing daily photos on my Instagram Stories, and posting updates in my main Instagram feed - as well as on Facebook, Twitter and here on my blog. So if you're keen to see what I'm making but don't use Instagram don't worry, you won't be out of the loop.

UPDATE: It looks like the direct links to my hashtagged 100 Day Project pictures aren't working if you're not logged into Instagram, which is rather annoying. If you don't have an Instagram account you'll still be able to follow along with my new project by browsing my main feed here, and you can see most of my designs from last year here.

The 100 Day Project 2017

Have you heard of #The100DayProject?

It's a global art project which anyone, anywhere can take part in.

You choose a creative action, do it every day for 100 days and share the results online. You can read more about the project and how to take part here. This year's project starts tomorrow (April 4th) and I'm joining in for the first time.

It took me a while to choose what I wanted to do for my action: something quick and simple? or something more complicated? Trying something new? or developing existing skills?

In the end I decided to opt for something challenging but flexible: I've decided to do #100DaysOfFeltStuff - recreating one "real world" object in felt each day.

Choosing "stuff" rather than something more specific means I'll have lots of creative freedom and can choose something small and quick on busy days (and bigger, more challenging things on my days off!).

I'm really looking forward to this project: flexing my creative muscles, solving a whole bunch of design problems, and making a daily space for creativity in my schedule. I also can't wait to see everyone else's projects and follow along with the project hashtag on Instagram.

I'll be sharing daily photos on my Instagram Stories, and posting updates in my main Instagram feed - as well as on Facebook, Twitter and here on my blog. So if you're keen to see what I'm making but don't use Instagram don't worry, you won't be out of the loop.

Here's to 100 days of felt-y goodness!

Kickstarting My Creativity with #Crafting365 (Days 1-2)

About eight years ago I started a project called "Crafting 365" resolving to "do my utmost to do some crafting everyday, and record it here on this blog".

I'd had a busy summer in which I'd neglected my (then quite new) blog and my little Etsy shop and not done much crafting. I missed the happy, satisfying feeling of making stuff. I hoped the challenge would help me make time for my crafty hobbies, help me fill up my shop and generally help me kickstart my creativity.

It totally worked! When I'd finished the project just over a year later (via a few breaks due to domestic disasters like a broken boiler) I'd made soooo much stuff and had a ton of fun doing it.

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have", as Maya Angelou said, and all that making bred more making, all the ideas I came up with sparked more ideas. It was awesome.

Sharing my work here on my blog and on Flickr gave me a sense of accountability that kept me going through the year. It also led to some great (and unexpected) opportunities, helped me connect to a whole community of crafty people (many of whom started their own Crafting 365 projects) and got me totally addicted to blogging!

Chatting with some friends recently about how I've been feeling in a bit of a creative rut, I remembered my Crafting 365 project and thought "ah, how wonderful that was!" Then I thought "what's stopping you from doing that again??"  

So... here I am. Starting a new "do something crafty every day for a year, take a photo, share it online" project. This time round I won't be blogging every day. Instead I'll be sharing my daily photos on my Facebook page and on Twitter (#Crafting365), then posting a round-up of all the recent photos here on my blog.

The only rule I'm setting myself is that if I'm working on something I can't show you (e.g. if I'm making a project for a book or magazine) I have to squeeze a bit of non-secret crafting into my day so I have something to share and so deadlines don't totally distract me from my personal projects. "There's no photo today because I'm on a deadline, aaaargh" = not acceptable, even if I just knit two rows of a blanket square before bed :)

Today is day three of my project. On day one, I decided I wanted to make something that was an explosion of summer colour so I drew lots of flower templates and started cutting out lots of felt pieces. I couldn't resist arranging them in rainbow order for the photo...

Then yesterday (day 2) I cut out lots more flowers. Just one more to go then I can start sewing.

I hope you'll enjoy following along with my making over the coming weeks and months! 

Crafty Ladies: Meet Nicole Vos van Avezathe

As regular readers might have noticed, I'm now running my Crafty Ladies series fortnightly instead of weekly. I love this series and I hope you'll continue to enjoy the posts when they pop up every couple of weeks! 

The second Crafty Lady this month is embroidery pattern designer Nicole who sells her charming work under the equally charming name of Follow the White Bunny. She's shared what she was up to in the run up to Christmas, and her tips for being (and staying) creative.

Nicole is one of the many designers whose businesses have been affected by the new EU regulations regarding digital products. She wrote a great blog post recently about how the new rules have forced her to stop selling her digital embroidery patterns but have also inspired her to think about what she really wants from her business and her creative work. I'm excited to see the new online course she's working on and all the stitchy projects she comes up with this year!

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Hello everyone! My name is Nicole Vos van Avezathe. I live in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, with my husband Erik, kids Luna (9) and Zoe (14) and cat Milo. We sadly lost our other cat Tijger recently. During school hours and often in the evening too, I run a small embroidery pattern design business under the name Follow the White Bunny. I sometimes make craft patterns too.

I love reading, listening to music and doing crafty things like quilting and sewing. I also love good food. I studied Medieval history but after I graduated, ended up working as a typist. Later I did planning & control at a health insurance company, which is an interesting career move for someone with slight chaotic tendencies :)

We then moved abroad to Norway for a couple of years and while my oldest daughter was in school and the youngest doing toddler naps, I started sewing and embroidering. And selling my first patterns!

Recently I’ve been making…

I have a bunch of unfinished sewing/quilting projects waiting to be finished but somehow I just can’t find my sewing mojo at the moment! I did finish the Noodlehead Supertote a little while ago. I like making practical bags with lots of space for when I’m out shopping and this bag is perfect for that.

For a book review, Handmade Scandinavian Christmas, I made some paper Christmas decorations with my youngest daughter last week. It’s always good to put a book to the test I think when you are going to review it. I normally never do any paper crafts (you can only do so many crafts!) but we both really enjoyed it and I was pretty impressed with the results. We did the proper grown up projects by the way but Luna was totally up to the task.

Hopefully I will have time to try a recipe from the book as well. Because we lived in Norway for a few years this book is partly a trip down memory lane for us. I’m looking forward to making a comforting bowl of Scandinavian rice pudding :)

I’ve been working on…

My main craft is embroidery so a lot of the time I spent on crafts involves embroidery. Usually I have several things on the go at the same time some ‘official’ and some for fun or to explore new techniques. I just finished creating and embroidering a design for a magazine, which was fun to do. I have also just designed a pattern called Wave Goodbye featuring a bunch of animals in a VW van.

I started on a completely new and rather timeconsuming embroidery project recently which is kind of a try out for an online class I’m planning to teach next year. I can’t share too much yet but I’m really excited by it! And… I’m working on a Secret Santa Swap present for one of my &Stitches colleagues!

I’ve been blogging about…

All sorts of things! Usually about embroidery though…I rarely plan blog posts, I just write about whatever comes on my path: a vintage book or a so called ‘aha’ moment about how to pull floss from a skein the correctly!

I’ve been reading…

I’m terrible at keeping up with blogs on a regular basis, so once in a while I check posts via Bloglovin’ and often I follow links people post on Twitter or Facebook or something. There was an interesting post by Abby Glassenberg recently about how much money fabric designers really make. The outcome wasn’t a surprise to me but I bet it was an eye-opener for many people.

I love to read books about history or (historical) fiction and I always have my e-reader full with lots of books, afraid that I run out of things to read! You can check out the books I read on Goodreads. For (older) books about embroidery I like to search Ebay or Abe books for affordable, interesting titles. I recently bought a fun, little book about Floral Embroidery from 1975 for just 1 pound. Unfortunately shipping to the Netherlands was over 5 pounds…

While I embroider, I’ve been watching…

Especially when I’m doing detailed stuff (which is often!) and peering through my magnifier all the time, I’m not able to watch tv while I stitch. I need to concentrate and often I just listened to music on my headphones as podcasts etc are too distracting as well. And even though I like alternative and rock music, I tend to go for calmer tunes while I embroider. I even made a ‘Dreamy Embroidery List’ on Spotify with dreamy tunes.  It’s quite a short list now but I’m open to suitable suggestions to add to the list :)

When I’m not crafting, usually later evening I like to watch documentaries about history or art. Or cooking programs! I also love most Tim Burton movies. We occasionally watch whole series within a week or so on Netflix. Currently we are watching the third series of Lilyhammer. It’s about a New York mobster, played by Steven van Zandt, who under a witness protection program ends up in Norway. It’s a kind of tragi-comedy.

Nicole’s 3 Top Tips for Being (and Staying) Creative

1. Stand out by being original and unique. Find out what inspires you personally and develop your own style. Sure you can jump on the Owl, Fox, Moustache whatever bandwagon but in the long run a distinctive design style that is close to you, is more valuable.

2. Develop and nurture special technical skills and expertise. Explore your craft in depth, it’s techniques and it’s history.

3. Try new things, all the time: new crafts, new places to go, new books, new colours etc etc.

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Visit Nicole's blog to see what she's been making lately, or visit her shop to buy her original embroidered pieces or a copy of her super cute Princess and the Pea iron-on embroidery pattern. You can also find her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or sign up for her newsletter.

Click here to read more posts in the Crafty Ladies series.

Crafty Ladies: Meet Kate Marsden

Kicking off the Crafty Ladies series for 2015 is the lovely Kate Marsden of Made By Mrs M, sharing what she was up to in the run up to Christmas.

I met Kate at Blognix last summer and have bumped into her at several crafty events since then! She creates original fabrics based on her paintings of mid-century architecture, then uses the fabric to make a range of stylish homewares and accessories. If you'd rather make stuff than buy stuff don't worry, she sells the fabric too :)

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Hello! I’m Kate Marsden, a textile designer and blogger.

I live in far South London with my husband, 4 year old son and 2 cats, St John and Tabitha. I left my day job at the end of last year to concentrate on Made By Mrs M and to spend more time with the little man. I’m very lucky that the increased popularity of blogs and ecommerce has come at the right time to enable me to do this.
 

Recently I've been making...

A lot of products for my shop and in preparation for Renegade Craft Fair and Crafty Fox Market. I’m working on a new range of clutch bags and wallets to complement my existing homewares – all utilising my fabric designs.

I’ve also started thinking about some new fabric designs I plan to work on after Christmas (my to do list for the quiet months of January and February is so extensive that I won’t be quiet!).

In my spare time I’ve been working on my first English paper pieced quilt, but I haven’t had much time for this recently.

I've been working on...

I continue to spend a lot of time working on my blog and also trying to promote my work a little better. Over the past month or so I’ve been promoting my work which is now on sale as part of the RAted range at the Royal Academy of Arts and the new products I’m introducing on the run up to Christmas.

I've been blogging about...

I’ve been working on lots of tutorials for the blog – they all have a textiles slant but a recent one involved making ceramic buttons.

I’ve written a few more ‘advice’ style posts too – my updated craft fair tips proved popular as has my creative business books post.

I've been reading...

I’ve been looking at posts on the Design Trust’s site quite a lot over the past few weeks – they have some great advice for small creative businesses.

On the run up to Halloween I got a little hooked on The House That Lars Built – she had a great series of costume DIYs inspired by artists.

I’ve also been looking for good things to do on an upcoming trip to Venice and stumbled upon this great post on Design Sponge.

Books wise, I’m mid-way through Art Inc. by Lisa Congdon (I mentioned it in this post). Struggling to find much time for reading at the moment though!

While I make, I've been listening to...

While I’m working in my studio I listen to music. Often the radio (Xfm), but I’m currently playing all four Courteeners albums on repeat like a teenager (I saw them at the Reading Festival in the summer and a liking turned into a mild obsession!). I’ve also been listening to Royal Blood rather a lot and a new (to me) band, Lucius.

My music choice doesn’t vary depending on whether I’m working or not. I have to say that one of the best things about working for myself if that I can listen to a lot of music – never been able to do that before!

Accompanying me in the evenings (when I tend to work from the sofa to keep Mr M company!) is 30 Rock – we’re about to start season 4. The only thing I tend to put everything down for is Sherlock, but I think we’re still about a year away from the next series…

Kate's Top 3 Tips for Staying Creative 

I found it very hard to use my creative side when I was at my day job. Some of the things I did do have proved to be really useful this past year too though in helping me grow creatively, generate new ideas and avoid getting stuck in a rut.

1. Never stop learning – by which I mean go back to college for a short course, take e-courses, read books. Try and do this as much as you can afford to. I’ve taken courses in ceramics, painting, screen printing, life drawing and more – they’ve all inspired my work and improved my skills.

2.  Don’t work in isolation – many small creative businesses like mine consist of one person in a room on their own. This doesn’t do anyone any good in the long term (even an introvert like me). Face to face courses help; attend craft fairs and talk to people whether you’re there to sell or not; if you’re invited to an event go, and network (even if it’s painful for you to do so) – start on social media if you prefer though, it’s less scary and I’ve made lots of friends and contacts there.

3.  Create something every day – a couple of years ago I worked on some fibre art projects in which I made a piece every day to represent my mood and how the day had gone. It was an interesting experience as it sparked lots of ideas which were unconnected with the project itself. Now I’m not as regimented but I always try to do something. Whether it’s making something for the shop, sewing one hexagon onto my quilt, a page of my sketchbook or a doodle, I always do something. It’s true that the more you use your creativity the more it grows.

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Visit Kate's blog to read more about her current projects, or head to her shop to see her fabrics, homewares and accessories. You can also find her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. 

Click here to read more posts in the Crafty Ladies series.

Crafty Ladies: Meet Janet Clare

The last Crafty Lady of 2014 is textile designer Janet Clare. I hope you guys have enjoyed this series! It's been a pleasure to showcase so many talented designers and makers, and I've got lots more interviews lined up for 2015 :)

I've been a fan of Janet's work since first seeing it at the Festival of Quilts back in 2011 - it is so charming and distinctive. Janet stitches and quilts, writes books and sewing patterns, runs workshops and designs fabric... I especially love her British bird quilt patterns.

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Hello! I’m Janet Clare and I design quilting fabric for Moda and write books (four to date!) and teach how to draw with your sewing machine. I have two boys and a dog called Betty who keep me very busy (and the house covered in mud!)

 

Recently I’ve been making…

... a couple of Anna dresses and have been trying very hard to master French seams (I can do them so long as they’re straight!). I’ve also been knitting the world’s most boring garter stitch scarf for my youngest Henry – it’s red, DK, 22 stitches and all garter stitch, but not only is it the world’s most boring knit it’s also the world’s most relaxing! It is well travelled and I will knit in public (trains, café) without flinching! Henry says he will only wear the scarf if it’s super cold, but never ever to school!

I’ve been working on…

I’m writing my fifth book The Wordsmith at the moment and you can see the inspiration for it here on my Pinterest board. I will have the book ready for the Festival of Quilts, August 2015, NEC Birmingham. Writing books is one of my very favourite things to do. I work closely with my friend Hayley who does all the graphic design and my friend Sarah who does all the photography.

When the book is finished we will put our best dresses on and meet in the poshest hotel near us for mojito’s! It’s tradition!

 

I’ve been blogging about…

I haven’t been blogging so much lately as I’m slightly obsessed with the ease of Instagram! However, I do still love my blog and have talked about our family visit to see the poppies at the Tower of London which was incredibly moving. Even my boys were silenced by the display!

I am lucky enough to design fabric for Moda and they regularly host blog tours. The latest one asked us to talk about things we love. Moda are very generous and all the designers had fabric bundles to giveaway and free patterns and we all taped a little video at Quilt market sharing a technique that is special to us.

 

In the summer I visited a school in Kent to see an exhibition of work they had done inspired by my first book Freya and Fred. The children had been learning about restorative justice and had all appliqued themselves and made a wall hanging which will be on display in the school. This was a very special evening as you can imagine. Knowing I have inspired people is truly amazing.

I’ve been reading…

I love Selvedge magazine which is always full of textile inspiration (even the ads are interesting!). I read a lot of novels- nothing too challenging and only last thing at night to help me sleep. The last book I loved was How Much of Us There Was by Michael Kimball. My favourite book of all is Anne of Green Gables.

While I sew, I’ve been listening to…

If I’m sewing or making something that has already been designed I’ll listen to BBC Radio 4- my Blighty quilt from Hearty Good Wishes was inspired by the shipping forecast!

 

Or I’ll watch a cheesy romantic comedy on Netflix. However, if I’m designing then only silence will do.

Janet’s 3 Top Tips for Being Creative

1. Authenticity is magnetic. If you want to succeed you must stop looking at and worrying about what everyone else is doing and just do your own thing. This is much harder than it sounds (and I fail at it regularly) but it really is the only way to get your voice heard. That voice has to be unique. So, write what you want to write and share what you genuinely want to share and your audience will find you.

2. Keep inspired. Again, often harder than it sounds but try and make time to play with your craft materials, experiment, see shows, read, look at Pinterest, go charity shopping and keep that ‘well’ topped up with ideas. Also, you need to be creative every single day- some days this means re-arranging a shelf after you’ve dusted it but as Alice Walker said ‘Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul’. I really believe that you have to nurture and cherish your creativity: ignoring it or denying it for too long might make it leave you altogether.

3. But the very best thing I ever did to help with creativity and productivity is to make my artisan apron - my work uniform. I put it on when I intend to design and work and take it off when I’m finished for the day. Everyone knows (including me!) that if I’m wearing my apron I’m working. Invaluable for a stay at home Mum of two boys and a big black dog whose day could easily be swallowed by chores and not by my design work.

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Visit Janet's blog to read more about her and her work, or head to her shop to check out her books and sewing patterns. You can also find her on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Click here to read more posts in the Crafty Ladies series.

Please note: the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links.