UK Handmade Interview & a Day at Pre-School

I forgot to mention a couple of weeks ago that I had been interviewed by the lovely and ever-so patient Kirsten Miller of UK Handmade for their Road Less Traveled series. I was a little bit nervous as it's the first proper interview I've done since starting Grace's Favours but it wasn't scary and the end result is something I'm really really pleased with and as soon as I can work out how to I'll be adding a "Press" section to the website!

to see the rest of the pics (and read the words!) click here

The other thing I wanted to share this week was the session I did at my daughter, Seren's, Pre-School class. Her teacher (who knows what I do for a living) asked if I would be interested in going into the nursery for a day to teach the Pre-School children how to sew! I was delighted to be asked and decided that I would get them doing a basic sampler like this:

Flower sampler

So I cut out a square of material for each child and machine stitched round the edges so it didn't fray once they started sewing. Then I drew the flower in 4 different colours (green stalk & leaves, orange centre, red for one set of petals and purple for the other set of petals)

I'd ordered a batch of large plastic needles and some embroidery threads in different colours and armed with all of this I set off for nursery on Tuesday morning.

Seren was beside herself with excitement and all her friends (actually, thankfully only 6 of them and 2 staff members!) were really enthusiastic about their "lesson"

Here are some pics from the day:

Great concentration from the boys - surprisingly!

Seren (in the heart dress) very keen to get every stitch right!

Mary: Are you sure I'm showing him right???

Sue: I'm sure I can do this!

One of the best results!

Stopped for lunch and a play, great progress!

They all worked SO hard, I was really proud of all the children! We didn't quite finish our projects in the day (interspersed with playing, running round outside and many pit stops for food and drinks!) so I'm going back in a fortnight's time to help them finish off.

I really really enjoyed my day with the kids, but my god, was I exhausted at the end of it!! I have a newfound respect for Nursery Staff!

Now pootling over to Handmade Monday now for a mooch round to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

VW Baja Bug Cushion - FINISHED!

Well this was a heck of a commission! I started it before I went on holiday in May, but quickly realised it wasn't something I was going to be able to put together in a week, so thankfully my lovely customer was happy to wait until after the holiday to get it finished.

This is how I left it before I went away:

To be honest I was thinking of starting again as it just wasn't coming together, but then after a couple of weeks away, and with renewed vigour, it started to take shape:

And then once I added the customisation I was really pleased. And this is how it finally turned out:

I've also finally done something I've been meaning to try out for ages - a collage of photos - this one shows the two pictures I got from the customer as the brief, and the end result.

I'm really pleased with how well it's turned out, but next time I'll have a better idea how long a piece of custom work like this will take!

Even though I didn't write this specifically for Handmade Monday this week, I'm going to link it up as we've just got back from a weekend away and I don't want to miss this week out!!

Welcome to the world of Uniquely UK

Hello my lovelies :-)

Sorry for being absent for a while... we had a wonderful holiday and came back last weekend, very reluctantly!

Having spent the week trying to get my head back in the game, I am now feeling quite motivated to get things going again!

However I may have mentioned that I'm going to be exhibiting at the Home & Gift Fair in Harrogate this year, so I've decided to keep the majority of my shops shut for another month to give me enough time to prepare for the event.

Buuuuuut.... there is one shop that I won't be closing as it's really new and very exciting and a collaboration with 9 friends... it's called Uniquely UK!

We are all existing and established designers & makers, who sell through Etsy, but we have felt for a while that we wanted to do something as a group to try and bring the unique, high quality and unusual items that we make to the forefront of UK consumers' awareness.

We are working towards running our own website, but in the interim we have opened a Folksy Shop

And here are the lovely Designers that I'm working with:

Aisling Dezines
Damson Tree Pottery

Erika Price
Jane Crick

Purse Poppet
RDR Photography
Rebecca's Emporium
Tatania Rose
The Feminine Touch

I would LOVE it if you guys would check out our collaborative shop and if you've got 5 minutes (although you'll get lost and spend hours ;-p) check out the gang's individual shops!

Now I'm off for a long overdue catch up at Wendy's Handmade Harbour Blog......xxx

PS. I've also got links to two of my cohorts' blog posts about our shop - both blogs are fab and worth reading so I thought I'd add their links in here:

The Feminine Touch's Post
Rebecca's Emporium's Post