Designing on Demand

I've been working on some projects for other people this summer, including designing some Christmas ornaments for an upcoming issue of UK sewing mag Sew Hip (Alice, the editor of Sew Hip said some lovely things about my work in this article she wrote for Etsy's blog recently about UK Etsy sellers - it actually made me blush).

I'm really enjoying the challenge of writing tutorials... but it kills me not to be able to tell you what I'm working on or to share my works in progress with you all like I normally do!

Finding things to blog about when I can't blog about what I'm making isn't too much of a problem (there's always something I want to mention), but it's taking me a little while to get used to working to a deadline (being self-employed I normally don't encounter many of those!) and coming up with inspiration on demand.

When I design things for my own shop, or tutorials for the blog I normally have an idea first and then develop it into a finished item suitable for sharing... but when people ask you to design things for them, you have to pull ideas out of nowhere! to a schedule! eek!

I like to think that my brainstorming skills are improving with practice, though, and once my deadlines have passed I'm hoping to do lots of brainstorming for fun tutorials for the blog in the run up to Christmas :)

Designer Crafts

This blog post is a little late - it was meant to follow on from my post about the lovely Quilted Jewels exhibition I went to during the Three Choirs Festival here in Gloucester a few weeks ago... but then I got sick and my blogging schedule got abandoned! Please forgive me :)

As well as the quilts exhibition I made it along to an exhibition and sale of "designer crafts" in a huge marquee outside the Cathedral. The exhibition featured work made by members of The Cotswold Craftsmen, The Guild of Herfordshire Craftsmen and The Worcestershire Guild of Designer Craftsmen.


The marquee was jam packed with lovely things - stained glass, pottery, woooden bowls and boxes, handmade furniture, leather bags and belts, paintings, photographs, woven textiles, metalwork and a whole assortment of jewellery.



I was particularly smitten by Rachel Padley's glazed bowls, the adorable wooden animals by John Johnson (we're big fans of these and are gradually building up our own mini wooden zoo - so far we've got an otter, an owl, a rat and a wonderful badger) and the totally stunning stained glass by Frans Wesselman. (Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take close-up photos of any of the individual stalls in the marquee, but please do follow the links to see lots of images on the designers' own websites).

Paperchase Pretties

We went to Bath for the day last week, for a bit of shopping and a lot of pressing our noses against the windows of shops so expensive we didn't dare go in them for the sake of our bank balances!

The boyfriend picked up a few bargain charity shop books and I bought a new dress and treated myself to some lovely paper goods from Paperchase. I can never resist a branch of Paperchase.

Letterpress notecards covered in teacups (I'm so predictable!) ...


... and a Sukie postcard covered in birds:


I've got a trio of large Sukie handkerchiefs which we use for wrapping our sandwiches for packed lunches and picnics, decorated with patterns of moths, leaves and birds. The birdie one is definitely my favourite, and the more times I look at that postcard the more I think it would be a good idea to keep it and frame it...

80s Child

Earlier this month Etsy published a cute article about sticker collections, and it inspired me to dig out my old sticker book and have a nostalgic flick through it...


Some pages are now almost empty (thanks to being plundered over the years to decorate letters, birthday cards and other things) but it's still got plenty of treasures!