Original Stitch

Make a Dolly Sling: the OriginalStitch Dolly Sling Sewing Pattern

2012-01-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

Yes. That is a grown woman modelling it...!

Phew, we've been getting down and dirty with our Dolly Sling redesign. We've tweaked and preened and primped a coupla things; they're much better designed now.

And it's all yours! Click here to buy the PDF pattern download.

Aw, the Dolly Sling - it's just one of our all-time favourite products - it has a lovely cute shape, the size is just right for fitting in lots of different shaped and size toys and dolls, and it even fits some well-known toys such as Build-a-Bear and Born Again dolls.

So if you're looking for a really unusual gift to make, this one definitely has wow factor.

Why OriginalStitch Patterns? Let me tell you...

1) No Wordy Cutting Lists!
Don't know about you, but honestly I find written lists tricky - I'm a very visual person, so I mean no offense at all to patterns which use them, but I likes pictures. So we always use cutting list images - you can see literally every single piece you're going to need.

2) Consistently Named Pieces
When you sew from a pattern, you start off with lots of pieces, and halfway through you have half-constructed bits....now I can get confused in patterns when there's no 'halfway house' names; patterns often state "Now take this piece" or worse, omit the noun entirely - "Turn over and stitch along sides" Um...turn which bit over? The bit I've just done or the thing I had to do before that?!!
We always make sure that once a construction is completed, we tell you what it will now be called, and when it comes up again in the pattern, that's how we refer to it. Sounds basic - helps in the long run!

3) Integrated Seam Allowances
When you cut out our patterns, you won't be expected to add seam allowances. I know this can in some cases be necessary, especially in the world of dressmaking, but we tell you every step of the way what seam allowance you'll need to stitch. It's almost always the same throughout the pattern, but even so, you will always be told what it is.

4) A Besquillion Diagrams

It's one of my very favourite jobs here at OriginalStitch, so maybe that's why we have so many of them, but we use looooooads of diagrams in our sewing patterns. I draw them myself, having designed the product myself or stood over Amanda while she makes it, so they are straight from the very horse's mouth - I draw them from the exact construction at that very point, so if there's still pins there, I draw them; if there's loose threads hanging down, I draw them. We then have our lovely designer Jon colour 'em in all pretty so they're even easier to understand, and have shading where there would be some, and right and wrong sides of the fabric properly coloured. Lovely. If you're terribly clever, you can probably almost make something without even reading, which is what my mother does.

"What seam allowance am I using?" she said once.
"It says it right there look Mum - quarter of an inch, see?"
"Oh I haven't read the pattern, I'm just using the pictures." she said.

5) No Template Enlargement

When you cut out our templates, you won't have to enlarge them. I'm quite happy to admit this may be a matter of preference, but I try to think of the person sewing from their abode up the top of a Welsh mountain, with no access to a photocopier shop, and as temperamental an all-in-one printer as we have (shh, don't tell it I said that, it's easily upset...). So our templates are designed to fit on an A4 sheet, so that when you print them out, they're real-size. You may have to join pieces together to make the whole template before applying to the fabric, yes - but we make this as easy as possible by including full written instructions and using nice little symbols.

6) They're available immediately!
Our patterns are currently PDF downloads, to which there is a link in your confirmation email, once you've purchased your Sewing Pattern PDF from the website. We have chosen this method because of our eco ethics - we felt it was a little cheeky to go printing out reams of paper for our sewing patterns when we bang on about environmental concerns.

Having said that, we'd be interested to know if you would like them as a paper version, because we would seek to work with some lovely bonkers paper made from rhino poo, or beer dregs, or old Barbie packaging or something. (We ain't joking, our tags ARE made from old beer dregs!)

7) Online Support
You can get support when making your pattern from our Facebook Page - just come and holler at our wall! One of us will come and join in the discussion. Of course you can always email us directly too.

So, if you haven't taken a peek at our sewing patterns yet, have a little look.

Which of our products would you like to see a Sewing Pattern PDF for next?

Personalised Stockings Special - 12 Months of Christmas Deals!

2012-01-14T10:42:00.000-08:00


Customer pic of little Tomaso getting ready for Father Christmas!

We are launching our ridiculous but like-honest-guv'nor-for-reals
12 Months of Christmas Promotion! To help us plan the Stockings better, and give you all a stonking good deal, we are offering silly prices on Stockings made throughout the year.

A personalised patchwork stocking is normally £36.50, but we are offering them starting at £25 in January!
Every month, the price will go up by £1 until normal pricing resumes in December. This is a great way to get one for all the family - as one of our customers, Claire said "They are so beautiful, and I love that we will be getting them out year after year after year; they are a real investment."

We were hyper-super-majormongously busy with our lovely Christmas stocking orders in the weeks before Christmas - but we still had time for one of our favourite games - texting photo updates to the customers awaiting them. Time to share - here's a montage of those pics, and the happy responses. To order your stockings for £25, simply head over to the website now - but hurry - this is the all-time lowest price!

The Union Jack: Loving it yet?

2011-10-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today, I am attempting a wordless blog post, with just lots of pictures.

Dang it! I've failed at the first count. Darn it and fiddlesticks, as we Brits love to say. No, but seriously, we're always saying fiddlesticks. And bother. And oh my goodness.

We Brits also seem to be good at bigging up our flag, the Union Jack, at the moment. Flags are an emotive, powerful symbol and for a while there the Union Jack came with a lot of jingoistic and nationalistic sentiments that bordered on fascist, rather than being an emblem of pride and belonging. Many of us rather flinched at it. I make no claim to understand or know the complex historical and social reasons for this, but certainly, it was an indication that the bearer, waver or wearer was to the right of centre in their politics. Now this is a democracy so bring it on, it doesn't matter what you vote, but I think many Brits didn't feel that the flag was theirs, except at world sporting events, when we felt safe in the knowledge it was ok to wapple it around and big up our countryfellows. Yes, wapple is a word. I just made it up, but it is still a word.

Enter Stage Left: the world of crafting. The Union Jack has been gently and uncontroversially popping up in textiles; in pottery, in knitting, crochet, upholstery, fabric design....it is quietly gracing cushion covers, comfortably inveigling itself in different colourways onto rugs, and politely positioning itself on mugs.

The daughters with Aunty Mairi

I'm not for one second going to pretend the Royal Wedding in April didn't bring the jolly old Union Jack romping home as a symbol of parties and silliness (hoorahhh!) because I think it did - we, for one, went long on the flag-waving and Union Jack biscuits, got dressed up in wedding outfits and sat in our living room having proper afternoon tea, don't you know. Significantly, I'm no royalist - I just like a good do.

And the fact that we've the Olympicationals coming to our town next year is making many of us very excited and flappy, and flags are a great accessory to have about your person when you feel like that.

Also, I like the colours of the Union Jack, not that for one second I stick faithfully to them when stitching one.

Good for eating too

We at OriginalStitch want ourselves a piece of this 'ere flag thang, and so Amanda and I have been taken an Olympic dive into the threads and fabrics and we're having a good play around with the design.

We'll keep you up to date as work progresses - we think we will get a lot more bonkers with it than it is now; maybe warp it and wangle it a bit, but we still like the bits we've been playing with so far. Certainly, having learned how to render it perfectly, we will now let our imaginations loose on it.

Have you ever tried to draw the Union Jack - let me tell you, it's a tricky beast....have a go - check out this tutorial here, and woe betide you get your diagonals in the wrong place!

I plan to bedeck my entire house in British-made Union Jack craft in time for the Olympics next year - will you be joining us?
What do you think of the Union Jack? Has it changed for you in recent years? And why?

Shoes - never out of place, even on a Union Jack

I Heart Wall Art: Make a Noticeboard With Scarves

2011-10-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

Now then, if like me, you prefer to make your life difficult via the means of:
a) Trying to not ever buy things new, unless they're full-on proper eco-friendly produced
b) Always wanting very pretentiously to do something a little bit 'different' but not actually having any ideas jump into your head easily
c) getting a bit cross and bothered and wishing you were a really creative 'blank canvas' person who just goes "Ooh, ooh, how about we twist some twigs into a giant pepperpot shape, interthread tin-can shards in it and then invent a whole new peg system made from old cotton reels and make a noticeboard that way!"

Yes, sound like you? Then what the heck, my love - just steal this idea. Honestly, do. It looks awful purrdee and is a proper good scavenging project. Plus of course, it's got hearts in it, and like it or lump it my good people, hearts are a nice shape, aren't they.

Deely-boppers. Key to our business. Ahem.

Stuff and Things You'll Need

Scarves from t'charity shop. Also good - silky tops you've kept to re-use for something. Best is silky things because they will not be bulky and will insinuate themselves nicely through rings and round nails etc
Rings - I found a bedillion inch diameter or so metal curtain rings in a charity shop once, and I used those. Failing that, use whatever rings you can lay your hands on. Can't find any? Don't worry - leave 'em out!
Magnets if your rings are metal - ideally little craft magnets (strong ones), but you could just round up all the magnets yer kids have abandoned
Paper clips, curtain cafe clips, bulldog clips - anything clippy or hangy or holdy or grabby. And yes, they are the proper technical terms.
Hammer and Nails
Tape measure, Pencil, Rubber

Ready? Hop to it!

We gave our workroom wall a good clean to rid it of dust and, ahem, pencil drawings, and removed bits of blu-tack and sellotape. A nice clean blank canvas for you to whack your scarf art onto.

Poke through, bring round, poke through again.

Tie/sew your scarves and silky bits together, and measure how long it is. You'll need this figure in your head to give you an idea of how big or small your outline is going to be in the next step
Put the curtain rings, if you are using them, at regular intervals. Simply poke through once, bring round and poke through again, as you can see here, so that the rings are 'caught' on the scarf.
Next you need to sketch your heart-shape on the wall (or hey - any shape, it doesn't matter! Go crazy you creative loons, you) using your pencil. Start lightly - it took us a while to get the heart shape
The mighty dustpan and brush

right, let me tell you, and involved lots of standing back and viewing it askance and squinty-eyed before we got it right, which in turn involved a lot of drawing, rubbing out and re-drawing.
When you're happy with the shape, start hammering the nails in to the wall. Now listen here - you have to angle them slightly, and the angle will differ depending on the shape the scarves will make. For example, the downward 'dip point' at the top ofthe heart needs a nail which is angled downwards so that the scarves don't just slip off, upwards....think tent pegs and guy ropes and you'll know what I mean! If in doubt, just hammer them in a little, so that you can manoeuvre them once the scarves are tied on. You'll soon see what we mean.
Next - begin placing your scarves round the nails - if you're on your own, you may need to tie the first bit to a nail, or it'll keep slidin' awff. Amanda and I were doing this together so one was holding the first bit in place while the other looped and curled the scarves into place. If you found the whole nail angling thing tricky, you can always 'loop the loop' the scarves round each nail.
Get cafe clips from curtain hardware suppliers
Tie the two scarf-length ends together when you've created your shape, or if you prefer, tie them to a nail. Don't worry if you have too much - just let it hang down, or cut it, or wind it round some more. Don't get hung up with measuring, no, no.
Now's where you get busy hanging things off your hearts! Now, I'll leave this to your imagination - we had all sorts of funny bits and bobs - we've got some things stuck on with two magnets, some things jammed into paperclips just hanging off scarves; we've got cafe clips holding stuff, and of course we used the nails too - see the dustpan and brush there?! Basically, use whatever you think might work!

A lot more interesting than a boring old noticeboard, eh? We shove things we love, reminders, our sewing patterns all hole-punched and hanging on a nail, ready to whip down and use when we get orders; we stick receipts on nails, hang works in progress, even coat-hangers sometimes, with other things hanging off them.

Take part in some heart wall art!

What will you do? Ooh, and what shapes are you thinking of using? A cat? An owl? Kisses? Tell me!

Featured In: Sew Hip August Issue

2011-07-28T03:09:00.000-07:00

As you may know, I write the Back page column, called Musings, in Sew Hip magazine. First up was August issue, and out today is September. So just in case you missed your August copy, here it is!

We also have a lovely feature in Sew Hip's latest issue - the September issue, which IS out on the newsstands now, so if you fancy a peek at the daughters doing sewing in my workroom, and other cheeky close-ups of work at large, then hotfoot it to yer nearest Noozagent and grab a copy.

And don't forget to read the back page too - it's about your workroom demons...!

Reinvintage: Revamp your Chairs with Scarves

2011-07-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to be guest blogging over Eco Age's blog this week, with a piece on quirky chic recycling - using, yes, you guessed it - scarves. I do seem to have a bit of a thing about scarves. Well, they're just so easy to get yer hands on!

Go and have a little read - it'll tart up your chairs beautifully!

Material World: 60s Kitsch-en, the August 2011 Featured Fabric

2011-07-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

Material World is launching! A new section on the website with each month's selection of 3 gorgeous fabrics - order any of our products to be made in those fabrics and you're entitled to get a big fat discount of 30% off usual prices, while stocks last of course.

In our last post, we ran a competition to get you lot to name it, and we had some fab ideas! Check out this sunny, summery list.....

Grandma
Sun Lounger
Summer Picnic
Beach Brights
60s Kitsch-en
Jaffa
Refresher
Springtime
and one suggestion from a Helen, who became a little overwrought, with
"Orange, loverly loverly Orange" !

And after much (seriously - how great are those names?!) consideration, the winner is........60s Kitsch-en! This was suggested by Helen Stokes, who said:

"They remind me of my nan's cups and saucers and kitchen stools. I would LOVE to own these fabrics!"

What's the prize?

The lucky winner gets to choose between:

a) 3 fat quarters, one in each of these fabrics (a fat quarter is 18" x 22", or approx 46cm x 56cm) or
b) A wha-hopping 50% discount off any product from the website, which we'll make ourselves using those fabrics. *A-curtsey-to-you*

This is a bright, full, tangerine - with a gentle patterned weave in it

Capturing an era - this fantastic floral is gentle yellows and dusky oranges

But what's their story?

The 60s Kitsch-en Collection, newly coined consists of these 3 brights - we think they're just perfect for jellybean interiors and picnic colours. They would certainly brighten up any room you put them in.

But what's their story?
My sister often turns up, says "All right Sis?" and heads straight for the workroom with old shirts, remnants and scraps of fabric. Oh, there's many a Mairi blouse in our makes. But this time she and husband turned up with mighty great bags of the stuff.

Mairi's husb is helping gradually de-fabrickise (yes, that is a word, I think you'll find. In my land) his lovely old grandma's house; she used to do a lot of dressmaking. Some of the fabric, like many of our groaning cupboards of stash, never got round to being made into anything, however, and so we have virgin vintage - and even the receipt...

Look closely - yes, you're right, that says 7/6. Pronounced, I believe, seven and six. I literally don't even know what that means, coz it's old money, folks! It was bought in Albert Street in Birmingham, in a store called the Beehive Warehouse. The date there, is the 11th July 1963. So, how fitting that this lovely bunch of beautiful, zany, vintage fabrics kicks of our inaugural Material World special offer.

And how about this for a crazy, zany, fabulously contrasting checked greens?!

These fabrics will be featured in Material World during the whole of August, where you can order any product to be made in them, and get a 30% discount.

Stay tuned for September 2011's Material World Competition

Christen-Me Fabric Competition

2011-07-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

We come across some amazing fabrics in our work here; not just because we rummage and scavenge and hunt and scour, but because of course now friends and relatives belch up their attics and cupboards into our laps.

This is a bright, full, tangerine - with a gentle patterned weave in it

We'll soon be launching Material World - a new section on the website with this month's selection of 3 gorgeous fabrics - order any of our products to be made in those fabrics and you're entitled to get a big fat discount of 30% off usual prices, while stocks last of course. But first, we want a name for the collection!

What's the prize?

Enter our competition and you could win either

a) 3 fat quarters, one in each of these fabrics (a fat quarter is 18" x 22", or approx 46cm x 56cm) so you can run up summink fancy all by yourself
b) A wha-hopping 50% discount off any product from the website you like, which we'll make ourselves, personally using those fabrics. *A-curtsey-to-you*

So, if you fancy yourself in an Apron of those colours, or you'd like a Laundry Bag to brighten up washday, here's your chance.

Capturing an era - this fantastic floral is gentle yellows and dusky oranges

Christen Me!

First up for August Material World are these 3 brights - we think they're just perfect for jellybean interiors and picnic colours! They would certainly brighten up any room you put them in.

But what's their story? My sister often turns up, says "All right Sis?" and heads straight for the workroom with old shirts, remnants and scraps of fabric. There's many a Mairi blouse in our makes! But this time she and husband turned up with mighty great bags of the stuff.

Mairi's husb is helping gradually de-fabrickise (yes, that is a word, I think you'll find. In my land.) his lovely old grandma's house; she used to do a lot of dressmaking. Some of the fabric, like many of our groaning cupboards of stash, never got round to being made into anything, however, and so we have virgin vintage - and even the receipt!

Look closely - yes, you're right, that says 7/6! I literally don't even know what that means, coz it's old money, folks! It was bought in Albert Street in Birmingham, in a store called the Beehive Warehouse. The date there, is the 11th July 1963. So, how fitting that this lovely bunch of beautiful, zany, vintage fabrics kicks of our Christen Me Competition.

Christen-Me Competition for August 2011 Material World

So, what do you think this collection should be called? What springs to mind when you drink in the colours and patterns?

Answers below in the comments, or over at the OriginalStitch Facebook page - scroll till you see the related post on this topic. Or at Twitter, using hashtag #mwaugust - we don't mind where you find us! But please add something in your entry that relates in some way to this competition, or we'll be all, eh? Do what? Hm? Pardon?

How about "I think you should call the Material World August fabrics Zippity Dippity Doo Dah"

Oh, darn it. Sorry, have I stolen your idea?! Do make sure also we can trace you, wherever you leave your comment.

And how about this for a crazy, zany, fabulously contrasting checked greens?!

We'll choose a winner on Monday 25th July, so stay tuned! The fabrics will then be featured in Material World during the whole of August, where you can order any product to be made in them, and get a 30% discount.

We can't wait to hear your ideas!

Fabric Reinvintage: Make a Shower Curtain

2011-07-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

Showering in reinvintage style!

The Husb threatened to hotfoot it down the nearest gigantesque supermarket and buy a shower curtain at the weekend. He has been nagging for a new shower curtain for yonks. I, however, did not want to buy a new one, unless I could find an eco-friendly one, so I ensconced myself in the workroom.

Over the last 10 years or so, I seem to have amassed quite a collection of shower curtains - there comes a point in every shower curtain's life when the mouldy mildewy bit at the bottom begins tickling yer tootsies in none too pleasant a way, and so down it comes, off gets chopped the bottom (ooh, weird English, hm?) and the rest is washed, and put away.

Till now.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen - the new all-singing, all-soaping, all-frothing patchwork shower curtain is born!

What do I need?

Got old bits of waterproof fabric you could use yourself? How about: old camping materials such as tents, canvas, cagoules, groundsheets if they're not too thick; and look in the charity shops for old shower curtains; often you'll find them completely unused, still in their packaging. And tell friends you want their scuzzy old mouldy ones. They'll look at you with disgust, but hey, you're used to that, right? You'll also need your sewing machine, invisible thread, heavy duty needle in the machine, and your rotary cutter and mat for the easiest cutting method.

How To Make a Strippy Patchwork Shower Curtain

1) Measure the width and depth of the curtain so you have some dimensions to work to. Mine was 71 x 71 inches.

2) Divide by 5, so that you are working with strips - I wanted 5 horizontal strips in mine. 71" divided by 5 is 14", ish.

3) Keep the top of the curtain, where the holes are. Fold it so it's in a manageable chunk, all the holes at the top, and cut to a depth of 14". Voila - there's your first strip! Also remove the little weights from the curtain bottom hem.

Measure to depth of 14"

4) Now cut 14" depth strips from all your fabrics. If you're using old shower curtains, all your strips will be roughly the same - 71" x 14". But if you're working with all sorts of offcuts - cut them into rectangles/squares, ensuring two opposite edges are always 14" - the other measurement doesn't matter (in fact you're going to make them all different lengths on purpose to get the scrappy uneven look) but you will be stitching all your 14" sides to each other so they must match.

Start cutting folded strips at 14" mark

Add a few daft captions

5) Once you have your strips, cut them into all sorts of different sized 'bricks' - the shortest being about 10", the longest maybe 25", and keep them all stacked up. I couldn't resist stitching a few silly phrases onto mine, but be warned - doing this means you have to plan where they occur in the next stage, if you want them to look truly 'random'....often looking truly random means planning heavily! The way mine accidentally came together meant I had all my phrases on the left of the curtain. Which I pretend is fine...but if you were planning it, you'd want them more evenly dispersed. Ahem.

Cutting different sized bricks from my strips

6) Now start to stitch 'em together! Use invisible thread, a good fat needle size - at least 90 - and a decent seam allowance - minimum half an inch. Stay random when you grab bits to sew together, don't try to be too orderly about it - I didn't go dot, flower, fishes, plain; it was more like dot, plain, dot, fishes, plain, flower, fishes, flower, dot, fishes, plain.....and the same goes for the different sizes. Stitch 14" to 14" sides, making sure you're stitching right sides together (although 10 points if you can see really quite a few wrong side flowers and fishes on mine....you can't? No, didn't bother me either...!) Keep stitching, so you're creating a long continuous strip. Measure how much you've made every now and then. In theory you need 71" x 4 so that you end up with 4 shower curtain width strips. Then stitch another good-sized brick on so you have a bit extra for seam allowances.

You'll end up with mounds of stitched bricks

7) Now, cut the big long strip into 4 strips - making each one about 73" would be sensible, and lay them on the floor to see how best to order them. You can see what I mean now about the phrases can't you?! All on the left. Doh. Let's name these top to bottom, Strip 1, Strip 2, Strip 3 etc

Swap them about till you like the order

8) You will now stitch the strips together. Start with your original shower curtain top, and stitch it to Strip 1 along the long edge. Remember right sides together - and you may need to 'neaten up' your long edges using your rotary blade and mat first. The long strip sides must be straight and neat before you start to sew. At this point, you are wrestling with mountains of crinkly shower curtain, so like, chillax, yeah?! Take your time...get it right...when you've finished stitching the Top (Holes) Strip to Strip 1, go and get Strip 2 from the floor, and stitch to Strip 1 and so on, till you have your whole complete shower curtain!

Lay the Strips right sides together

9) Hem all round the three edges to finish off, and if you have kept the weights from your old curtain, try stitching them into the bottom hem. It's not dastardly important, folks, but it does make it hang better.

And there you have it! A singularly individual shower curtain, which you can pretty much guarantee no-one else has, we think...yes? We would LOVE to see any images if you make one of these - so send 'em to enquiries@originalstitch.co.uk and we will definitely show them off the universe for you.

Off you go then - go rummaging for waterproof things....

7 Reasons to buy our Sewing Patterns

2011-07-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

We love our Sewing Patterns, and we're simperingly proud of them. Shall I tells you for why? Shall I? Hm?

We've been doing lots of nice PR things lately, and people often ask what it is about our Sewing Patterns that makes them different, or special or easy or unique; and being a little slow on the uptake, it only occurred to me after the fifth person asked this, that I ought really to have answered this question already.

Like, duh...

Both Amanda and I have followed many, many sewing patterns in our time. Some difficult, some head-bangingly impossible to follow, some wonderfully simple, some kinda in the middle, ish, somewhere. Some nearly made me cry. Some were joyous. So it was from our experience as beginner users that our Patterns were born, and for this reason we have always fiercely defended the 'beginner' nature of them, in that easy patterns are nice for everyone, not just beginners. My mother is an extremely experienced dressmaker (she made both me and my sisters' wedding dresses) but I can remember her frustration at the pattern she was using - it was tortuously written and omitted enormous chunks of information. She found herself groping her way blind through vast tranches of tulle, netting, interlinings, stiffenings and other masses of froo in order to figure things out. It wasn't pretty. And the swearing was a little colourful. And I nearly always came out the worse for it because I then had pins stuck in me during fittings.

Anyhoo, armed with all this history, here are the things we love about our patterns, and which we guarantee you'll get in each and every one.

1) No Wordy Cutting Lists!
Don't know about you, but honestly I find written lists tricky - I'm a very visual person, so I mean no offence at all to patterns which use them, but I likes pictures. So we always use cutting list images - you can see literally every single piece you're going to need.

2) Consistently Named Pieces
When you sew from a pattern, you start off with lots of pieces, and halfway through you have half-constructed bits....I often got confused in patterns because there didn't seem to be the halfway house names; patterns often stated "Now take this piece" or worse, omitted the noun entirely - "Turn over and stitch along sides" Turn which bit over? The bit I've just done or the thing I had to do before that?!!
We always make sure that once a construction is completed, we tell you what it will now be called, and when it comes up again in the pattern, that's how we refer to it. Sounds basic - helps in the long run!

3) Integrated Seam Allowances
When you cut out our patterns, you won't be expected to add seam allowances. I know this can in some cases be necessary, expecially in the world of dressmaking, but we tell you every step of the way what seam allowance you'll need. It's almost always the same throughout the pattern, but even so, you will always be told what it is.

4) A Besquillion Diagrams

It's one of my very favourite jobs here at OriginalStitch, so maybe that's why we have so many of them, but we use looooooads of diagrams in our sewing patterns. Don't know about you, but it is just so very much easier. I draw them myself, when I have designed the product myself or stood over Amanda while she makes it, so they are straight from the very horse's mouth - I have drawn them from the exact construction at that very point, so if there's still pins there, I draw them; if there's loose threads hanging down, I draw them. We then have our lovely designer Jon colour 'em in all pretty so they're even easier to understand, and have shading where there would be some, and right and wrong sides of the fabric properly coloured. Lovely. If you're terribly clever, you can probably almost make something without even reading, which is what my mother does.

"What seam allowance am I using?" she said once.
"It says it right there look Mum - quarter of an inch, see?"
"Oh I haven't read the pattern, I'm just using the pictures." she said.

5) No Template Enlargement

When you cut out our templates, you won't have to enlarge them. I'm quite happy to admit this may be a matter of preference, but I try to think of the person sewing from their abode up the top of a Welsh mountain, with no access to a photocopier shop, and as temperamental an all-in-one printer as we have (shh, don't tell it I said that, it's easily upset...). So our templates are designed to fit on an A4 sheet, so that when you print it out, it is real-size. You may have to join pieces together to make the whole template before applying to the fabric, yes - but we make this as easy as possible by including full written instructions and using nice little symbols.

6) They're available immediately!
Our patterns are currently PDF downloads, which you can access right there in your purchase email, once you've been to the website and bought one. We have chosen this method because of our eco ethics - we felt it was a little cheeky to go printing out reams of paper for our sewing patterns when we bang on about environmental concerns.
Having said that, we'd be interested to know if you would like them as a paper version, because we would seek to work with some lovely bonkers paper made from rhino poo, or beer dregs, or old Barbie packaging or something. (We ain't joking, our tags ARE made from old beer dregs!

7) Online Support
You can get support when making your pattern from our OriginalStitch Cafe- it's where all the manuals and manufacturing information is housed for our stitchers to access, so it's where we put information relating to the sewing patterns. Come and join, and any help shouts you put out we'll pick up - either myself, or Amanda, or even one of our lovely stitchers will soon come to your aid!

So, if you haven't taken a peek at our sewing patterns yet, have a little look - we're working on a whole raft of our Piece & Jam Collection items next, so we'd love to know - what would you most like to see next in our range of Sewing Patterns?

In the Making: The Men's Shirt & Tie Bag

2011-07-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Now where did I put those pi...oh yes, in my cakehole

We are in love with our Fortune-Teller Bag, it's super simple to make and bags of fun to wear. You can run one up in 3 minutes flat. Nearly. Well, maybe half an hour, but that's how quick and simple it is if you do our scarf tutorial, residing for now over at Mrs Thrifty's, where we proudly guest-blogged. However, that's strictly for friends or for meself, but transferring the design to our product range means a little more quality control. So here is one, a custom make for my good friend, who saw mine and ordered her own. She stole her husband's shirt and sneaked it down the Post Office. She could have stuck some of his ties in too - so the handles are old ties, but for now, we used some lovely old vintage lining fabric so the handles slide smoothly inside the bag casings.

When the shirt arrived I got my grubby, shoddy benailed mitts (aren't they a disgrace, my nails? My four-year-old painted those on for me 3 weeks ago. I'm just waiting for them to grow off because I've run out of nail varnish remover).

Um, as I was saying, I got my shoddy benailed mitts all over the shirt and cut it to smithereens before reconstructing it into a bag.
Naked. No, I'm kidding, I just happen to have a strapless top thingy on, but I admit it does look a little dodgy. Unless we want to start up a naked sewing club? Hm?

Hang on...pins, needles, rotary blades....I'm thinking casualty, embarrassing potential for ending up on the medics' facebook page entitled OMG You'll Never Guess What Injury Came Into Casualty Today

I'm thinking maybe we stick with clothes. Let's leave naturism to beach volleyball.

Anyhoo, here it is; from shirt to bag. It's where all shirts dream of ending up....

Grabbing buttons...

Cutting off cuffs...

Lopping off collars...

Cutting out the big shapes....

Sewing 'em together...

Adding lining pieces...

Piecing the structure...

Is it a cuff, or is it a pocket?

Stitching it all up...

Giving it legs - got to have your brand in there

Not wasting the breast pocket!

Putting buttons back on...it looks like tiny knitting!

Give it a little security with a button-up tab...

Re-using the buttons and button placket for a little detail...

Rouche up the handles....

And voila - one Men's Shirt Bag.

Coming soon to the website! So if there's one of yer man's shirts you've had your eye on, stick a balaclava over your head and sneak into his wardrobe to half-inch it, nabbing a couple of ties while you're at it, and bob's yer uncle, a truly unique Men's Shirt Fortune-Teller Bag.

These will be available as a product to buy on the website very soon, but you know you can just get in touch with us anyway, right?
Here, at Facebook...
Here, at Twitter...
Here at the website...
and Here on the Blog!

Top Tips on Shopping Eco 3: Don't Lose Them, or You Might Lose Out

2011-06-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

Eco-friendly lunchbag!

You know I like to share with you easy ways to shop in an ethical way, because it's a good thing to do. It's nice to the planet, and it's nice to people.

If you are a dedicated ethical buyer, as I am, though, there is a downside. Each purchase has to be researched, considered, compared and then usually purchased online. I admit there are times it would be easier just to slip out to my local builder's merchant, or mega-supermarket, or large famous online retailer. You are lucky if you are able to nip down to your local high street to grab eco-friendly clothes pegs, some environmentally friendly furniture polish, or an eco solution for your child's lunchbag. Every time I have a purchasing need, I have to research the ethical options online for solutions.

I admit it, I've had to change the way I shop a little, so I thought I'd share with you some of the ways I do this - I already spoke of online ethical 'magazines' in the post about Green e-Zines, and how to decrease your environmental footprint by buying British in this post, and this will add yet another dimension to your ethical purchasing.

Like, follow?

One of my vices. Shoooooz. Click for more.

I always follow great companies whose eco credentials I think will come in handy. I may be fiercely resisting buying shoes, but want to know I have ethical shoe boutiques at my fingertips when that party invitation arrives. When you find a company you like, go and find them on Facebook and click on the Like button, or follow them on Twitter if you're a tweeter. They may also have a Blog - click on the Follow or RSS feed buttons on their blog so that you can keep in touch.

Cheeky minx. Worked though!

Green businesses, like us, tend to use the social networking sites heavily to engage with their customers, because often they're not enormous corporates with massive advertising budgets. We try to get up close and personal (in a very loving sort of way, not in a smarmy space invading way. Well, maybe sometimes if you're very handsome or pretty....) so we're right there when you need us. Quite often this is where businesses are at their silliest, like when we asked for your help to name our visiting Grass Snake the other day. (Olwyn, she's called, by the way.) The laziest customers, like me, even use Facebook or Twitter pages to ask customer service questions or even better, ask for discounts...I did the other day, in a blatant and cheeky post on Swings and Pretty Things' wall. She responded, I bought, she was happy, I'm happy. Everyone's happy!

And the answer was, yes, she did! Click here for more

After tweeting generally for eczema products, this company responded to me; we got into a conversation and they came back to me with links to a product, and even told me about a discount code I could use. She wanted the sale, I wanted the product and I wanted it there and then! Job done.

Sign Up

Pass the Pimms darling

I'm an instant signer-upper. I don't feel I'm powerlessly bamboozled by newsletters - companies are governed by very strict laws and guidelines when it comes to sending you email newsletters, and most, like us, just want to alert you to new launches, new products, sales, freebies, competitions and other things we're up to. Sure, I get quite a few every day but I have them going to an email account which is not my work one. I scan them vaguely every day, and that way, if I'm sitting thinking about a garden party I'm planning for the summer (yes, summer - that sunny shiny thing we sometimes get in June, remember?) and I happen to open a newsletter from the Natural Collection which says this in the title "Let's go Al Fresco! Outdoor Dining at its Finest", then I'm going to give it a look. Honestly, I don't look at every email, but they're already self-selected - I signed up for them, chances are one day they may have the thing I happen to be after. And if my need was very fleeting - new pond lining specialists for example, and I'm not really interested any more, I can always unsubscribe. Unless the newts eat the old lining, in which case I'd be really peeved I deleted it, darn it and fig.

See it, wish it.

Sitting on my toolbar. Little temptress.

I am fully prepared for the onslaught of gasps and controversy I might now meet for consorting with big corporates; but I'm telling you, when the things you seek are not immediately to hand in your local supermarket, this - the Amazon Universal Wish List button is a very useful thing! You drag a little button up onto your toolbar, where it lives, waiting for you to press it whenever you see anything, anywhere, on any website that you like. I'm guessing most of you have an account at Amazon, and you might even already have your wishlist set up there. But did you know that you can add to your wishlist from ANY website? For eco buyers this is great - if I stumble upon a product I like, I wish it. It's a good tool for specialist buying. And if you have persons in your life who are a little bit net savvy, you can of course leave it lying open, accidentally, or share it with them.
I wish!
(Let's put it this way - I actually ended up buying all my Christmas Wishlisted stuff, with all the Folksy gorgeousness I'd drooled over, myself. With my eyes closed - he was trying to hide the pictures with his hand whilst I typed in usernames and passwords and navigated round sites.
No, he's not 80.
Anyhoo....)

Pin it

Of course, if you want a place that's a bit more public to list the things you love, then there is Pinterest. If you haven't come across this yet, it's like a mood board, or inspiration board - again, with a handy little button you install on your toolbar - see? Every time you see something you like, you click on the little Pin It button, and it asks you which of the images you can see on that page you want to pin on your board. It's another sharing site too - other people can come and drool on your board, you can re-pin other people's pins, and you can have lots of boards, covering all your desires, fetishes, needs and wants. So, next time you see a product you love, pin it! Not only can you drop big hints with friends, but it's a handy reminder too. And again - for specialist, niche or non-high street stuff, what a great way to keep a record. If a little tempting...!

So next time you're browsing at OriginalStitch, but not quite ready to buy, don't just sit stand there twiddling yer thumbs! Pin us! Wishlist us! Like us! Follow us!
Oops, I seem to have become a little self-serving there [grins evilly], but in all seriosityness, if you find a good green company, you may not easily find them next week. Having massive, enormous standout and instant brand-name recognition in a crowded internet market is not easy for small green businesses, so grab their details while you can, then they'll be there when you need them, you follow me?!

Life's Just Better With Jam

2011-06-21T06:02:00.000-07:00

Of course, it's taken me so long, their feet no longer fit. Ahem.

We discover, Dormouse Moneybags and me, that all of a sudden a half-term or an Easter or a Christmas holidays is slap bang sitting right on top of us. Wham! Just like that. We're all, what the, how the, where the heck did the time go? Are our children ever in school?

I like how it looks as if they've signed their feet...

And in those weeks of course there's little point trying to do anything involving the following high falutin' thinky activities - planning, strategy, website editing, product design, image editing.
You know, just the stuff in our jobs. No way. Forget it. And certainly not making products for our lovely (we're curtsying right now, curtsying) customers, who deserve only the highest quality products we can muster.

Add one gorgeous bright red giant bathmat!

But we're addicted to sewing, so we do both attack little projects for our own home, since it doesn't remotely matter if we cock those up. Yes, I like to make a right old scruffbag of a thing for my gaff. I don't care about loose threads, scruffy edges, double-stitching, linings, neat hems, market trends, on-trend colourways or nuffink. No, I just grab some scraps, cut 'em up, hoop up, throw a sausage at the kids, stitch something to something else, lob some squash at the kids, stitch some more bits to some other bits, cut, snip, stitch, say "Yeeees!" to whatever thing they've just asked for (crisps was it? Tequila? Tree-climbing? Fire-starting? No idea, just can't stop in the middle of machine-embroidery), stitch a bit more, pinking shear some edges, bob's your uncle and here's a bowl of ice-cream with chocolate sauce and yes, of course, help yourself to too much telly.

Enter me for Mother of the Year Award, you say? Oh yes please, do, do.

Machine-embroidered scraps for a picnic blanket

Anyway, so here are the things I'd been meaning to make for donkeys' years, and scruffy though they are, I'm glad I've done them. They are the very things I love - they inject creativity into the fabric of this house. They are there to please no-one but me (and if they please other people, hooorah!); they are spontaneous; vintage; sustainable; re-used; and best of all, being used, so I get to have a little cock-eyed smile at them each time I see them. Slightly smug. You know that smile.
I must tell you that the bathmat idea is not mine, no - I saw it in passing at a nice blog once, and always meant to do it. You can find a smashing tute for it here if you're not confident about tackling it freestyleeee....

The picnic blanket idea has been germinating for a while in my bonce.

These are all machine-embroidered squares with daft phrases on them, like our Piece & Jam Collection. Ok, it's going to take me a while, but once I've done 12 or so, I'll throw them together with some other squares to make a picnic blanket - whack an old shower curtain on the back and hey presto, all ready for an English picnic, for which waterproofing is always advisable. A load of foody phrases, coz life is just better with Jam.

Whose voice can you hear now? Yep. That's right. Homer Simpson.

Yes, that is Eddie Izzard, most beloved of this Isle. There'll be a few more of his by the time this picnic has finished. Cake or death?

So, now then - I'd like to know any of the following in your comments please...either here or on our Facebook page....

a) What did you make in the holidays, and on a scale of 1-10, how scruffy was it?
b) What were your most shameful hands-off childcare tactics? Share. Seriously - I need some tips!
c) More Eddie Izzard phrases for the picnic blanket please. And by the way, these are for everyone - please make a picnic blanket using them! Could you pass me the idioms please. Thank you.

Grubby Buggy Revamp Sewing Pattern!

2011-06-06T04:42:00.000-07:00

Hoorahhhh! Well, that'll teach us to make silly bets with ourselves. And publish them. A couple of weeks ago I said this outlandish thing on the OriginalStitch Facebook page

Well. The web goblins' famous techno spider-bot crawled across it in their evil cyberspacian way and thought to teach me a lesson - unleashing some lovely webby glitches on my Powers of Uploading and Launching A Product. So instead of taking my planned one and a half hours to achieve, it took more like one and a half weeks. Ahem.

Two kids? Two buggy seats!

Anyhoo, you'll all be delighted to know it is now available!

There's a nice little history behind this being our next launch. We ran a lovely competition with the super duper (big cheer please) The Sewing Directory, to get the sewists and stitchers out there to help us decide which of our products we should launch the Sewing Pattern for next. The winning product was the Buggy Seat, and the winner picked out of a hat was Anna West, who received a ready-made version made by none other than me me me lil' ole me, and the sewing pattern itself, which will shortly be winging its way to her.
She sent us a lovely Tweet to say...

"The buggy seat arrived safely yesterday; my daughter loves it!  She  can't believe it's reversible, all her dollies are taking turns in it!"

Lovely full-colour sketches

Aww, we like it when you feel the OriginalStitch luuuuurve. And, just to help everyone feeled all loved and special, we also included a 25% discount for Sewing Directory users so they could buy this and any other patterns they like from our selection.

No wordy cutting lists here!

For your discount, just head on over to The Sewing Directory's Facebook page where you should find a status update, or have a read of the lovely interview they did with us. You'll find details of the discount there. If you do use the discount, don't forget to make sure you've Liked their page on Facebook, or that you follow on Twitter! Go and say hi, and make sure you bookmark the website. It's a wealth of information on sewing courses, supplies, and articles. Plus it has fantastic competitions like the one we did with them, every week (I've been a loyal follower for yonks, and I have to tell you, I've won quite a few prizes!)

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the Buggy Seat Sewing Pattern - like all our Sewing Patterns, it's packed full of easy-to-follow instructions, with a pictorial list of the pieces you'll need (we like to steer clear of wordy cutting lists), and lots of lovely little sketches to help you make the Buggy Seat without confusion. This is a super pattern; to quote our stitcher Jennie - this is great for 'pimping up your kid's ride'! Plus, what a fab idea for a gift, eh?! If We Do Say So Ourselves. Seriously, I mean, EVERYONE's got one of those grubby old buggies lying about!

Ooh, and why not come and join the OriginalStitch Cafe? That way if you do get stuck, you can just shout, and someone will be right along to help you get your wrong sides on the right side.

10 No-Messin’ Rules for an Efficient Laundry Day

2011-05-26T06:15:00.000-07:00

The Mama of All Bung-It-In-Bags

You think I'm kidding don't you? I'm so NOT kidding. I've only gone and written a perrrrrroper, nice and domesticated blog post! This will knock your socks off. Just make sure you pick 'em up and clean 'em after.

My Hardcore, No-Messin’ 10 Rules for an Efficient Laundry Day

Our new Piece & Jam Collection takes iconic shapes and phrases and turns them into mini-artworks on every day stuff. Sound a bit arty farty? It's not really - this approach to our products comes from trying to make the paraphernalia of housewifery fun, not just functional.

I am not known for my enjoyment of washing chores (I'm a very shoddy Domestic Operating Officer), but that’s exactly why I need it to be an efficient and time-saving operation. I would rather be sewing, you see?! So here it is:

1) Count your pegs. Have I gone mad? Seriously – count your pegs, and check out how much hanging space you’ve got. We’ll come back to the pegs and line in a minute...

2) Sort your laundry bins. Don’t have huge ones. But do have a few, because you’re going to sort clothes the moment you get naked, my friends. Establish the following laundry baskets:

a. one for white undergarments

b. one for dark undergarments

c. one for workshirts

d. one for dark clothes

e. one for light clothes

f. I tend to shove all the kids’ clothes in one or two bins divided into lights/brights

g. I have one for woollens and silks etc (which, ahem, never really get washed.) Anyway – you get the drift, yes?

Try to plan your Laundry Baskets so they relate to where you put things away – so if you have all the kids' tops and t-shirts in one chest of drawers, have a laundry basket for that category. All the husbands’ pants and socks in one chest of drawers? A laundry basket for that category.
Pyjama drawer? Pyjama laundry basket.

3) DON’T move your laundry baskets from their allotted positions, on pain of death! They live there to catch yer smelly smalls – let your Laundry Bags do the moving jobs.

Disobey the Receptacle Rule at Your Peril

4) Start thinking in ‘loads’ and ‘receptacles’. Have SMALL receptacles such as laundry bags to take your stuff from laundry basket to washing machine. We designed our Laundry Bags in two sizes – half and full load! Don’t overload! Too much and you’ll end up with ditched knickers on the floor. Moreover you’ll have too many clothes to hang on the line and not enough pegs to hang them with! Ah, do you see? Told you it would make sense.

5) Obey the Receptacle Rule: Always have Only One Load Per Receptacle, and Always One Receptacle Per Load! The laundry bag is like a faithful bodyguard – it stays with its load at all times. Leave the bag by the machine (a line of rustic hooks on the wall by the machine is perfect for hanging bags on), and there it is – ready to decant your shiny smalls into when done.

6) The Load fits the Line! Now your perfectly size-defined load of washing will magically fit the number of pegs in your lovely Peg Bag, and the amount of space on your line.

Peg Bags like art. Bring it, they say.

7) When dry – fold as you take down. And this is where that tip about matching your laundry baskets to where things live helps – on a good day, I fold all the items from the line onto a chair, then carry up and put them all away in just ONE place, not 18! No stray teatowels, no odd socks, no belligerent towels creeping in. And the trusty Laundry Bag gets put back upstairs, ready for its next lovely filthy occupants.

8) One in the Machine, One on the Line, One to Put Away. Have a Maximum of 3 rule! A cheeky queue of Laundry Bags next to the washing machine isn’t so bad, if you have a utility room that can accommodate such guests, but get upstairs and put the clean and dry ones away first, you slattern you.

9) Have a Washing Calendar. If you’re really efficient, you can even do a calendar, for all your categories, including towels and sheets (for which bulky monsters our beefy Bung-It-In Bag is designed). Not forgetting of course, Sunday Evening at 9.30pm – School Uniforms. Ahem...

10) Be green in your washing choices - if you prefer a stiffer alternative to Laundry Bags, you could try sourcing a fairtrade jute basket, or look for a recycled plastic basket like the ones in Folksy store Merja’s Crochet Recycle. For other washday products, try Nigel’s Eco Store; for some cool British-made and green pegs, you could give these recycled clothes pegs from GreenTree a try and if you really want to have some fun – make your own cleaning products – that’s what I do. For all the ingredients to make them, try Summer Naturals, and give this smashing little book a try – Natural Stain Removers, by Angela Martin.

Ooh, you'll be mean, green cleaning machines in no time!

Come Press Us!

2011-05-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

The OriginalStitch 2011 Spring and Summer Press Release

Thanks to the lovely Seven Colour Media, who work with boutique (yes, I think we like the term boutique, no?) businesses to offer great bite-sized PR packages, we are working very hard to get our delicious new Piece & Jam and Stratford Collections out there into happy homes in the nice big wide world...

But before you click, ooh, ooh, turn the sound up - it's another YuDu document! I do so love the YuDu flippy flappy page-turny noises!

And yes, I think you'll find that is the technical term, m'kay?

The Piece & Jam Collection Launches!

2011-05-09T07:52:00.000-07:00

Well, we are delighted to announce the launch of our brand new, hard fought, hard won, 'Piece and Jam' and 'Stratford' Collections!

Now then, when Amanda and I decided it was time our Kids' Collection got some company on the site, we wanted to get back to basics and sew something from our hearts. We agreed to go off and pursue our own stitchy little agendas and come up with a collection each, that we would then market. This allowed each of us to do her own thing, and remain faithful to it. Teamwork is essential in business, but sometimes you also have to let your own creativity spark fully into a great big fire too!

Piece and Jam is my fire, and Amanda's burning desire is Stratford.

When I was a nipper, I and my several other nipper siblings used to play outside. Of course, then we'd get hungry and hassle that lady who lived in the kitchen. That's right, Mum, her name was. Or rather "Mu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-ummm....." which is what all self-respecting children call their mother. Even when they're grownups with children of their own and want their mother to take up a hem or design a whole product for their vintage and recycled fabric homewares company. Ahem.

Wanyhoo.....so, she would lob at us what she called a 'piece'n'jam' to shut us up and keep us outside. I believe it is a Scottish phrase, or at least, that's where she found it, her parents being Scots. A piece'n'jam is just bread and jam. No butter or anything fancypants like that, oh no. Just a piece of bread.

With jam on.

Now, although our Piece and Jam Collection is sort of, essentially, my baby - in the end it was actually Amanda who has made the products. Lazy aren't I? So I was sitting here with my free-motion embroidery head on, sketching vintage sewing machines or radios or socks or pants or shoes (well, go and look!) and thinking up phrases, and fiddling with embroidery threads and having enormous fun 'writing' in thread on bits of vintage fabric, and then I'd turn up in the school playground, and shove my makes at Amanda. Kind of drop them at her feet, like a cat with a dead frog.
And say things like - "Um, fancy putting that on a pegbag?" or "Hey, you know how good you are at making Tea Cosies?" or "Oh you're so pretty and clever at making great big laundry bags.....ooooh look at this, wouldn't that look nice on one?" and then I'd run, run like the wind....
Poor woman.

So, in the end - Amanda pieces together the fabrics, linings, straps and templates to make the actual product and I supply the 'Jam'! Of course, our lovely stitchers will make them once we have sent them the patterns and they're ready for the jammin', and so when you order, you must still have a look at your OriginalStitch Tag to see which of our stitchers made your product.

What's great about Piece and Jam is that you can choose your piece, and your can choose your jam. Want wholemeal with raspberry? No problem. Rye and Stoneground with Gooseberry? Ciabatta with Fruits of the Forest you say? Done.
Oh, no, hang on - that's actual bread and jam, sorry....

Let's try again, yes?
Want an Apron with a Radio on? We're on your wavelength.
Want a Shoe-Bag with a Sewing Machine on? We're sew with you on that.
A Tea-Cosy with Bunting on? Just flag it up when you order.
A Laundry-Bag with Shoes on? We'll toe the line...

Am I having a little too much fun with this? Well, why not. This is a fun collection of iconic shapes and phrases turned into mini-artworks on everyday things.

Coz why should your laundry bag be boring? Get jammin'!

Yellow Cinnamon Cupcakes

2011-04-04T09:01:00.000-07:00

Nothing some charming child-like art can't fix, hm?!!

I forgot Mother's Day. Well, I didn't, precisely - Eldest Brother had it all in hand with a joint pressie from all four of her offspring, so I knew we had the gift sorted, but I didn't manage to get a card in the post. For possibly the first time in my life I suspect. Shocking! Bad daughter. She has forgiven me of course; mothers are good like that, and so to celebrate I thought I would write an ode to my mother.

Trouble is, I'm not awfully good at the sentimental. We are rather more sarcasm and irony based in our gene pool, and actually showing our emotions is, cough cough, ahem, stiff upper lip, not quite the done thing. So instead, I thought I would pay homage to a trait of my mother's which I am CERTAIN all your mothers have too - the random and apparently innocent things they take massive exception to. I mean, good old-fashioned shouty outrage.

My mother says she used to be a very patient person, which makes us all hoot with laughter, and then says she doesn't think she is all that opinionated, which makes us all positively snort our drinks out through our noses; and then she says "I'm not aggressive am I?" which makes my father guffaw out loud and then move swiftly away.
"I call your mother The Rottweiler, you know," he says.

Anyway, so here they are, the Top Five Things My Mother Takes Great Exception To

Let's go on an Anti-Cinnamon demo!

1: Cinnamon.
Seriously; it's becoming quite the family joke to offer her cakes specifically because they have cinnamon in them so we can see her absolutely outraged reaction to it. She maintains that cinnamon is trying to take over the world, like an evil dictator.
2: Basil

And basil - who's with me? Placards?

Basil and Cinnamon are probably in it together. I think perhaps Cinnamon is the leader, and Basil the thuggish loyal henchman who'll do anything Cinnamon says, in their relentless pursuit of entry in to all dishes. ("Why does everything have to have bloody basil in it?")

But it's yellow...

3: Yellow
If ever you see something, be it flower, clothing, wallpaper, piece of art, jug, car, fabric, book cover, whatever - and you say "Oh that's nice, isn't it?" she looks at you as if you have completely lost your marbles.
"But it's yellow..." she says, emphatically, staring at you.
4: Cupcakes

No, no, I don't get it.

This one makes me fully crack up laughing. Quote "What is with all this cupcake business? Whatever happened to fairy cakes for heaven't sake?" It's one of those things she just 'doesn't get'. I love that - "I just don't get it!" I find myself going "But, MU-U-U-UM! You don't have to GET it!" Like a teenager.
5: Men's Loos on Television

Ok. Kind of with her on this one. As she puts it, "Oh for Heaven's sake, MUST we see men weeing on television? Is it strictly necessary? Why does everything have to be so lavatorial? I do not wish to see urinals on my television in the evening."

I find these things so funny. Let's face it, we all have situations we don't like, such as the cheek of those marketing messages that ring you up and they're not even an actual person, bins being left halfway down the road after the binmen have been, lost phone signals, parking oversight facilitation officers, or whatever the new word for parking attendants is, women putting their make-up on on the train, and people who miss the beat when they sing. Or don't sing in tune. Or both.
Ok, some of those are mine, I admit it.

Us siblings' partners, those saintly individuals who did not deserve what they got, bless them, when they took us on, look at us askance when we laugh at the things our mother does.
"But YOU do that, too, you know that don't you?" they say after we snigger as our mother bellows "DOOR!" after someone left it open.
"No I don't! Do I?"
"Um, yes, you do, and you also point out that you do not want to live in a corridor..."
"No, that's not true, I don't say tha...do I? Do I really?"

So there you have it. Oh sure, we all have laugh as my mother goes into one, and one of my brothers says "Oh wind yer neck in, Mum!" but we are all heading in the same direction, and sure as eggs is eggs, we'll be doing it in about, ooh, one and half years.
Actually, my brothers already do go off on ones.
Us girls are just too nice; although my sister is a LOT scarier than me.

Ooh, can I just say, tuna.
Tuna, I just can't bear it.
Why does everything have to have tuna in it? What's with tuna?
I just don't get it.

You're so priiiiiddy Mum.....and one thing she DOES like - tartan. I've tartaned her up!

What doesn't your mother get? Share!

BLOG! POST! READ! NOW!

2011-04-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

Yep. We've painted our nails. What of it?

You know those days when, at the end of the day, you sit down with a sort of shell-shocked look on your face? The one which sends you running for the sherry?
Ok, I know, I'm not 89 but I does like me a sherry of an evenin' - wine's just got too much, um, liquid in it. The only liquid I drink in copium is tea. The rest has to be concentrated, syrup-like.
(Yes, I do believe I totally just made up the word copium, but we're liking, yes?)

Gerrout of it Mummy, this is our camp.

Well, this week has had its fill of days like this. No major disasters. No trip to A&E, no antiobiotics, no ermergency vets, chilli accidents, rotary blade cutting incidents, poisonings, squashings, tiger maulings or blocked toilets.

In fact, it was all just run of the mill stuff. But don't some days just seem so very, very packed with the run of the mill stuff, that you are quite astonished to discover the day didn't contain 38 hours more than normal?

Tuesday felt like a speeded up version of itself. And my interaction with my daughters seemed to exist entirely of trying to stuff food in their faces, get them into different clothes, and get them out of the door. You will notice the day starts full of vocabulary and over-statement, with some histrionics and exaggeration thrown in; and ends in barked one-word commands in a shrieky voice.

Yes. They are sticky jewel decorations.

7.40am Begin the yelling from the kitchen that if they want breakfast it's now or never. Get no result, so continue the yelling from the kitchen, finishing with such apocalyptic hyperbole as "Oh my good grief and shenanigans could you please just get your cereals or you will be going to school hungry and then you'll fall over and graze your knee and Hetty for God's sake go and do a wee you're doing the wee wee wiggle again stop holding it in or your bladder will burst all over this floor"
7.50am Curse the lack of intravenous tea-drip, and briefly imagine strapping one of those sucky-tube water-bottle thingies that cyclists use to my dressing-gown ties for morning tea application.
8.01am Start the beautiful singing of the "Will You Two Please Get Dressed" song, whose sweet melody can be heard for the next 20 minutes, culminating in a wondrous crescendo at 14 minutes past 8am.
8.14am Ok so that's a lie - it's actually like a practise session for the Fishwives of England Competition, culiminating in a stuttering panic-ridden shriek of "Will you for the love of all that is holy please just get dressed before I lose all my minimal remaining marbles and have an apoplectic fit! ISLA! PANTS! HETTY! TEETH! PANTS! SOCKS! TEETH! PANTS! SOCKS! PANTS! SOCKS! PANTS! PANTS!" followed by "Oh lord, where for the love of god is your reading book and where did those hairbands ping to last night when we were flicking them at bedtime you'll get nits!"
It's a beautiful song, beautiful.
8.17am Cue the lyrical, melodious song - "Get Out, Get Out, Get Out of the Door"

Is this helping you type Mummy? Is it? Is it helping?

And thus it continued. After a peaceful morning's work, there were the 28 minutes after getting Hetty from preschool and before getting Isla from schoo.
(HETTY! COAT! DOOR! HETTY! DOOR!)
Then there were the 22 minutes between getting Isla and getting ready for Art Club
(JAM SANDWICH! MILK! ART CLOTHES! WEE! DOOR! NOW!)
Then the 34 minutes between getting them from Art Club and getting ready for the School Dinner Launch Tasting Session at school
(NOODLES! EAT! COAT! DRINK! WEE! QUICK! CAR! NOW!)
And lastly the now rather belated bedtime.

(TEETH! WEE! FACE! HANDS! PYJAMAS! BOOK! TEDDY!)

I don't know whether I ate at any point; I often lapse when working my tiny work-crammed 5 hour day. I think perhaps I didn't, because I positively stuffed my face at the School Dinner Tasting on three different dinners - vegetable lasagne, chicken curry, beef pasta, salad, and garlic bread; stealing my children's food (look, they'd had noodles, ok?) and even getting seconds. Delicious, almost enough to make me become a teacher so that I can eat that for lunch every day.

But let's face it, that's probably not a good career choice for me, because I'm pretty sure teaching does not consist of "READ! WRITE! LEARN! DRAW! GLUE! STICK! PLAY!"

So come and find me and tell me - what's your favourite barked command? Or one you remember your own mother saying? Come on, let's all get it out of our systems! Leave a comment below or pop one in at our Facebook page.

Darn this Thread!

2011-03-31T01:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I think it's nice to big people up. Actually, I'm often bigging people up. I figure there's a lot of smalling down in the world, so why not temper it with a bit of loooooove?
Now then, Twitter, I have discovered, is a self-selected meeting of minds - whatever you're into is what you choose to hear about, and in business terms this is a fabulous resource. Twitter is like the office - my Twitter for instance is full of sewing people, eco-friendly people, PR, social media and marketing people; and also people interested in sewing and being eco-friendly. So it's the first place I go when I have a query, question, or general wondermenting moment in life....

I have, over the past month, whilst we work our little bottoms off on our new collections, been tweeting iron-jawed, grimacing, grumpy tweets along the lines of, and I quote -

"Today I will be mostly sewing like a beginner, snapping needles,   snagging thread and drawing like I don't know what hand I write with   *shod" 

and

"For heaven's sake, what's the best thread to use for free motion embroidery you sewing Tweeps?"

And this, along with this Tweet from fellow sewist Abi at SewYou -

"SEWING PEEPS: Has anyone used BrandNameY threads? Usually I use BrandNameZ .... how do they compare?"

- prompted a great exchange of minds from two essentially competing businesses. Or even an exchange of great minds, I like to think, said she, with a smug smile on her greasy fizzog.

I responded thus:

OriginalStitch says: Don't know, but i'd be interested to know! I'm  using BrandNameX - nice and silky but do catch up in the needle a  bit.... 

And so began this thread, all about well, um, thread....

Darned pesky varmints, yon cotton reels...

SewYou: Yes, BrandNameX are notorious for being a  bugger to sew with, hence my avoidance! will get off eBay job lot BrandNameY; send u 1. 
OriginalStitch: Don't you just love Twitter for exactly this  type of tip?!! Of course I'll have to use up my busload of BrandNameX  first...*frowns* 
SewYou: Possibly obvious question, but have you tried going up a needle size or two? 
OriginalStitch: As in towards jeans needle? Think I'm using an 80...you think more like 100 is better?                  

And then this thread continued unwinding over email, since that lovely lady DID send me a reel of cotton to play with!  Now, how kind is that?  And in thanks I sent her a little packet of patchwork squares, buttons and other sewing notions (of very little use or value in the great scheme of things, but sewists and stitchers are terrible magpies, hoarding fabrics and buttons and things and going "Oooh....buttons! Mmmmm, patchwork....")
Darn pesky varmint, yon interfacing...

And the email thread went along the lines of, and this time I will just give you a completely non-sensical jist of the conversation, coz it sounds fabulously bonkers that way:

"Ah, no foot on....fabric in your hoop....suck eggs....heavily embroidered....machine-led motifs or letters....egg-sucking beginner....the colours aren't as bright or varied....needle-through-finger accidents....been there, have t-shirt.....A&E were very unsympathetic.....lots there I ain't doin'....trying to avoid the interfacing....however tight I pulls 'em....find an eco-friendly version....they come in light, medium and a stronger one....rip it off...an iron-on one....the double-sided fusible interfacing, yes...the glue is an absolute complete !*?&$?!?@! to get off your iron....sort it in a jiffy....temporary adhesive spray....it won't, um, come unstuck....that's a complete a**e that is....."

Do you see?  How very, very professional it all sounds! This is just like YOUR office conversations, no?! And so, the lovely Abi from SewYou helped me out with a technical problem, even though she and I compete in the same sphere.

So I say thank you Abi, who you can find here, and all the other Twitter people who answer questions and are prepared to dish out knowledge rather than fiercely guard it.  

When they call it social sharing, it is just that.  Sharing.

So share with us now - what's your best piece of office jargon?!  You know, the kind where when you first started you thought they all sounded really pretentious, but now, you use all the time, in absolute seriosity?!  I think Abi and I would love to hear it.  Dish!

Where Can I Buy Recycled Fabric Gifts?

2011-03-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well what the devil on seven horses do we call this lot then?!

Don't know about you lot - but I turn to the internet for almost all of my purchases with a question like this title, because ain't many a high street that reliably houses the sort of ethical/eco-friendly/fairly-traded goods I've got my beady eyes out for. I earmark certain local shops because I know they'll have what I want (you know who you are Freerange and Planet Health and Organics Thame), but for other stuff, it's no good me wondering the streets of Britain randomly hoping to stumble across a shop that might sell ethically traded tweezers, or organic cotton thread, or some nice environmentally friendly kids' school vests, or custom-made wooden turnip peeler. (Ok, so I never have actually searched for one of those).

We businesses who specialise in something effical or eco bust our guts trying to get our 'search engine optimisation' search terms right, because we know there is some soul out there looking for what we're selling, and they're not going to trip up in a dark alley and accidentally stumble into our shop. T'intermesh is a big place.
(Wait. Now get me, aren't I just the fancy one? Aren't you impressed with my impressive tinkleweb terminology?!)

A mat. No, a coaster. No, um, a holder. Thingy. Thing.

When I was first doing this website shenanigan, I was totally bamboozled by the search terms I had to think about putting in my (know-it-all voice again please) global metadata, oh yeah....
Hang on, to be honest, I still am, so I have to frequently sit down and have a good trawl through the site, asking myself if I have peppered it with enough of the words my customers might be typing in to Ye Olde Google, so that we find each other in the dark alleys of the internet. Ooerr, Mrs.

The most bonkers was our Pencil Rolls, and Double Pen Totes. Now, I know they're called Double Pen Totes, and YOU know they're called that, but supposing you've never heard of them? Or OriginalStitch? What might you type in then? Well, you should see some of the daft things I've got in me globals, love - here's a selection of what I imagine you lot might search for.

pencil roll, double pen tote, pencil bag, crayon holder, crayon bag, pen pockets, pen storage, pencil storage, pencil roll-up, pencil pocket storage, fabric pen pockets, recycled fabric pen bag, recycled material pen pocket bag, vintage fabric pen bag, vintage fabric kids pen storage...

Because not only do I have to think about what we should call the darned products in the first place, but then I've jolly well got to predict what you nutters are going to call them, and now it's all just gettin' a little bit philosphical, man, right?!
Never mind metadata, it's gettin' metaphysical innit?
I've got to make sense of what's in my own head, then try and see inside yours. Hell's Bells on a stick.

Can you imagine how much fun we had with the search terms for the Dolly Sling? Can you?!

So tell, me, empty the dustbins of your brains for search terms. Answers on a postcard please! What would you type in, if you were looking for one of these?!
Ah go on. Tell me in a comment what you would call this, and I'll enter it into the bowels and nooks and crannies of the website!

Face it, you Twits, you Follow?

2011-03-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

This was the original Facebook logo - they nearly went for it, honest, but decided on a felt-tip pen one in the end.

Well now, me and Dormouse Moneybags, aka Amanda, only went and had an OriginalStitch Works Outing yesterday didn't we! Yes, we were on day release from OriginalStitch Towers, leaving The Husbs in charge of their respective progeny, and off we went t'Big London to the UKAware Show at Olympia.

It's full of like-minded ethical, eco-friendly, environmentally driven sort of types like us, so we came back bulging with business cards. And we thought we'd do a little celebration of some of the stuff there. Follow us, follow them, follow us all! Hoooorah for following!

Gingham tweeting, it's all the rage

Now, we love this Blog, and it is where you'll find the chaotic undercurrent of OriginalStitch, (are you Following us in your Google reader thingy? Oh, do, my loves, why don't you, hm? Look, you can join all those lovely looking peeps to the left there - aren't they handsome and pretty?) but Facebook and Twitter is where we also daily update you on products, special offers, or just share nonsense from our day in headline style, plus links to the latest blog post too.
And look - I've even made you special linky badges from fabric to get you to them - just click and follow us!

But with no further ado, lookee here at these fab things:
www.reestore.com, home of Dragon's Den winner Max, who designed this smashing plastic bag bin - you just pop the bag handles over the tops and the bag pulls the plastic tight. Brilliant. Made from 100% recycled plastic. We went home with 4 between us. Saw us comin' eh?

Next, we liked Fairtrade Innipooh, with these fab bicycle baskets made in India - go to her website and read the fab story of how Trudi, from Suffolk, came to find herself in business with Parvathi in India. We toddled off with 3 of these in bright jolly colours for some daughters. I repeat, saw us comin' eh?

And how about this for the latest in at-home parties - the Swap-a-Rama Clothes Swap parties? You take along 5 of items of clothing or accessories you no longer wear, but which are of course nice and clean and non-shoddy, swap them for vouchers, and spend those on something pre-loved your friends have brought along, for a small fee on the door! Amanda, who is Class Rep on the PTA is all over this for the next Ladies Indulgence Event at our girls' school up the road, so I will be manhandling fivefoot women in the street to come along so there's stuff to fit me. Um, that's women who are 5ft, not women with five feet. You knew that, right?

Bung-It-In Bag, from soon to arrive Piece&Jam Collection

And last but not least, here is a lovely sneak preview of an up and coming product we found being showcased by two very attractive, glamorous and successful looking ladies wondering round the show, one of whom was five foot.
Ahem.
Ok, so you know that's us right?
I'm that transparent aren't I?
Well, anyhoo, what the heck - we'll be revealing the whole new collection soon so come and find us on Facebook and Twitter, and you'll be able to see all the next sneak previews, as we launch the whole Piece&Jam Collection. It features applique and quirky embroidery of fab, daft or iconic images like bunting and radios and sewing machines, on stuff like aprons and laundry bags and tea cosies and Bung-It-In Bags.
Oh yum.

We look forward to meeting you, you handsome pretties, you.

3 Top Second-hand Scavenges

2011-03-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

Now I know we here at OriginalStitch make lovely things out of pre-loved fabrics, so let's say that's a given. Rummage for those scraps! Grab those remnants! Dig out yer sewing machine! Download our lovely PDF patterns! Make something using them! Excuse that blatant plug! What a lot of exclamation marks!

Erm, yes, well, anyhoo - in this lovely sunshine we're all getting I bet you've been out and about, browsing and scavenging in second-hand shops, so how about a quick reminder of 3 Fab Finds you can make into lovely pressies for your nearest and dearest, with links to some tutes and how-to's to get the job done. In my experience, these are the most plentiful things in charity shops - you just can't walk out without them, so they're a sure-fire way to rustle up a pressie without too much of a search. Just click on the Top Tip title to go to the tutorial. Smashing.
Then just pop your makes into the post, addressed to Herself, OriginalStitch, Up In The Chilterns, Engyland. Thank you. I promise I will pass them on to your friends on your behalf.
[evil smile]
I promise. No really. I will.
[Eyes glint evilly].

Anyway, shall we?

Top Tip 1: Teapot Salad Pots:
This is one of my favourites - and right now is the time to do it! A pretty teapot, some inexpensive salad crop seeds (either salad leaves or a happy indoor herb like basil or coriander), soil and hey presto, a lovely present. Give either before they've germinated, with a lolly-stick nicely labelled, so they can watch 'em sprout; or fully grown.

And the best bit? Water 'em through the spouts!

Top Tip 2: Fab Photo Frames
There are besquillions of these in every charity shop - all shapes and sizes, and if you're lucky you'll find some pretty cool ones. And some fabulously cheesy 80s ones that make you go eeuuuw. Look at those, but politely whisper to them that not on their nellies will you be liberating them. Step away from the eeeuuuw.
I never, ever buy frames new. You just don't need to. Get arty!

Vintage cottons, vintage postcards, pre-loved frames. Bargain!

Top Tip 3: Scarves for a Fortune-Teller Bag
Again, you will love the array of um, shall we say eclectic, tastes that are catered for at the scarves rail. But squint a bit, absorb the colours and grab willy-nilly and you'll end up with something absolutely unique - this is a truly fab gift for a lovely laydeeee. For the ridiculously easy Fortune-Teller Bag, I guest-blogged at the magnificent Mrs Thrifty's (if you don't follow her, go, do, you must, simply must) so hop over there and check out the tutorial for that.

So easy to make, it's bonkers. And right fancy, too.

There. Honestly - write a list of all your friends, hotfoot it to the charity shops and get a load of these things in. And there you have it - this year's presents for all!

(Apart from the OriginalStitch products you'll be making or buying of course, my good lady, Sir, Madam, gentlefolk...do step this way....!)

No Risk It No Biscuit Baby

2011-03-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

I'm a very high-powered business woman. You can tell can't you?

Well, now that I'm a very serious business woman and all that malarky, I do try to keep up to date with news that's meant to matter to us here at OriginalStitch Towers. I rely heavily on Twitter for this - it's brilliant - I am following some great businessknowy sorta peeps like StartupDonut and UkStartUp and they keep me nicely tuned in to things I ought to know.

It's not child labour, honest guv'nor.

Apparently, I read, there are some bits and bobs from The Budget that are relevant - like the enterprise investment initiatives that will help boost start-ups. So - investors seeking tax relief can invest in 'higher-risk' businesses and get a nice handshake from the tax-man, I'm assuming? And I'm sure that's a jolly serious thing, but I wondered what high risk meant? And as I pondered, I began to giggle a bit. OK, so high risk start-ups - um, so what then - businesses that are likely to fail? Businesses which stubbornly resist sensible business advice?! Like, say, British manufacturing?! Coz there's a whole great big bunch of us artisans out here, manufacturing stuff, set against the stark realities of stuff made in other places for a tenth of the cost and people saying ooh that's a bit expensive isn't it, £9 for a tea-cosy?!

Take a note please Miss Lloyd-Evans

So I'm like, oh hello there! Cooeeee! Oi, over 'ere! We're high risk! We're stay-at-home worky mum-persons, making life jolly hard for ourselves by insisting on running an eco-friendly business, paying our stitchers a fair price, and highest risk of all, slicing our fingers off with rotary cutters or pricking ourselves with pins, all whilst burning ourselves cooking the kids' shoddy pizzas and attempting to wire a plug with a faulty screwdriver . Lordy, you investors, bring your hard hats, I've got high risk going down right here! No, doorbell doesn't work, hence the screwdriver; just come in the tradesman's entrance round the back, yes? Here's a tupperware tub - pop your readies in there, loves, ta.

Yes - coz it's no pain no gain and all that, you investors; come join us on our highwire risky craziness, our pride in British made!
An American I knew once used to say, at any juncture possible (like if we were all trying to decide whether to do tequila shots or not) - "Hey you guys, no risk it no biscuit baby!"

Which I think is most appropriate. Let it be our motto! No risk it no biscuit baby!

Celebrating Stitchery

2011-03-23T05:12:00.000-07:00

Teddy's going the right way for a smacked bottom, Donkey. Sorry, it's not often you'll find me quoting Shrek.

One of by very very very FAR the nicest things about being me, apart from the fact that I can make an excellent and surprisingly loud woodblock sound with my mouth, wiggle my eyebrows separately, and whistle like a strutting sailor at a magnificent 100 decibels, is when the postman knocks on my door and gives me lovely parcels full of the work of OriginalStitchers.

We are very excited to be stocking some of our delicious kids bits and bobs in a new shop opening in Princes Risborough - Gorgeous Giggles; and so we set to and sent orders off to, in strict alphabetical order - Bev, Jennie and Katie, three of our first stitchers.

I love our designs, if I do say so myself, but I have discovered I love them even more when they are made by our stitchers. The fabrics they've all chosen are just so fab, and I hate to say it, more exciting than the fabrics I have here, so the products they made are super cool and gorgeous. And as more and more of the parcels tumble in, and we unwrap the beautifully stitched makes, the colours all pile up and remind us of one of the central tenets of OriginalStitch - a riot of colour, pattern, shape and stitching!

Click on the slideshow for a very silly look at them - aren't they smashing? I can't bear to see them go to their loving new owners' hands without capturing them in all their gaudy glory first - so here they are, very much enjoying a photoshoot in this delicious sunshine we're having today. As you can see, I was ably assisted by Brown Teddy, who apologises for the state of this rapidly unravelling, increasingly thread-bare nose. As he pointed out to me, it's like the teddy equivalent of bogeys hanging down from his schnozzer. Teddies are a little on the gross side aren't they? I would never use the word bogeys in a blog post.

Thanks Bev, Jennie and Katie - you've done us very, very proud, and I'm sure Helen from Gorgeous Giggles will be delighted to have these in her shop x

Personalize your own free picture slideshow

Zakka Attack

2011-02-27T12:09:00.000-08:00

Well, I can't tell you how much Amanda and I are loving our 'Design Sabbatical' as we are referring to it [to wit, knuckling down to working hard on our 'look' and trying NOT to be distracted by one of the other many hundreds of schemes we always have in our heads].

We've attacked our task of uplifting our design ethic with gusto. I've been experimenting with some free motion embroidery designs, to quirk up our collections a bit, concentrating on technology images and art naif designs, and Amanda's been jealously guarding the most amazing scavenge yet - a friend called her to say did she want all of last year's soft furnishing sample books from her shop? If Amanda hadn't nose-dived onto the floor in excitement, she'd have bitten her hand off and everything.
So she's quirking it up with those - we're aiming for some patching work there, and will need some big design pieces to take advantage. I'm concentrating on the detail in the art so we can then apply a central art panel to any piece of zakka we fancy, be it laundry bag, tea-cosy or iPad Slipcase.

Zakka is a word I've come to realise encompasses OriginalStitch products well - here's how Wikipedia describes it....

"Zakka (from the Japanese 'zak-ka' or 'many things') is a fashion and design phenomenon that has spread from Japan throughout Asia. The term refers to everything and anything that improves your home, life and appearance"

And Squidoo elegantly encapsulates it:

In Japan, all the 'small, various products used in everyday life' are commonly called 'zakka,' a term which encompasses household goods, daily necessities and sundries. However, zakka has also come to represent a style of art and craft that is simple, charming, and of Japanese esthetic"

We lack a word in English for elegant, cool, useful, and spiritually uplifting stuff in our homes.
Homewares doesn't quite cover it, and is a bit commercial. Other candidates? Knick-knacks (see Great Grandma's mantelpiece); Knicky-Knacky Noos (see very bulging antique and second-hand shops); Ornaments (doesn't cover useful stuff); Bits and Bobs (doesn't cover much at all).....um....and that's it.

Hence perhaps, why the word Zakka has made a timely surge and is pretty on-trend right now - tying up with the trend towards homemade and made with love. And as William Morris put it, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful". That pretty much sums it up. We like - a sentiment that crosses continents and generations.

And it begins with 'z' which I like. I very nearly neatly trounced my brother at the addictive iPhone app 'Words with Friends' (which is Scrabble to you and me), by having all the letters for Zakka but nowhere to put 'em. How maddening is that? And despite my impressive score of 66 for one word, he is beating me.
We no longer speak, my brother and I, we spellz.

Dolly Sling Tutorial: Quick-Make Straps

2011-02-14T05:27:00.000-08:00

And the imaginatively named Brown Teddy comes too....

Well, I don't know, you write a pattern, or a recipe, as I like to call 'em, and you think, ooh, i like doing it that way, ooh, I should change the pattern, oooh this is a nice way to do that, ah, maybe I should change the pattern, ooh i could add a little sketch in there...

Luckily I am able to recognise these thoughts for what they are - my inability to just leave things alone! Everyone does things differently, and the recipe is fine. It's fab, in fact, but it is one of our "Needs Loving Care" difficulty ratings, so of course, I'm always worrying about whether I've communicated it properly.

But oh hello - blogs! Aren't they just perfect for precisely this sort of refining touch to the published article. So I'm sharing a little Dolly Sling tip for you here, to help you make the perfect sling from your pattern.

Just before we start, here is where you can buy the Dolly Sling Pattern for just a few of your finest shiny coins.

The Signature OriginalStitch Straps

Dolly Sling in all its strappy glory

When the first Dolly Sling prototypes were cranked out of Old Mother OriginalStitch's (that's my mum) machine, she had used what have now become our signature strippy things. We use these for our Backpacks too. I love this method coz I have never got to grips with rouleau loop turners, the darned pesky varmints, so I hate having to do the turny-inside outy thing with narrow straps. And this zigzaggy patchworky look (yes, those words exist, people. In my world.) is very much our thing - great for using up scraps and fun and funky. But I have discovered some people find 'em a bit tricky and fiddly. I don't, which is unusual because I have almost always fallen into all the pitfalls other sewists have, but even so, there are long-winded, and short-winded (now I'm not sure that's a word....) ways of doing it.

Oh and hey, you don't have to buy our patterns to make these - these straps do look great anywhere. Apron straps, bag handles, loops, drawstrings...you've got projects that could use them, right?

So, here's what you need
* 2" wide long strip
*1" wide long strip
*Double Sided Fusible Interfacing (herein known as DSFI, I think, don't you?!)
*Iron, contrasting cotton, sewing machine

1: Cut your DSFI to fit the 1" strip of fabric, or even better, slightly narrower.

2: Iron the DSFI onto the Wrong Side of the strip (stitcher Katie, who has made a few Dolly Sling orders in her time, puts baking parchment under and on top of hers to save ironing board and iron from 'orrible sticky goo - it's good advice!)

3: Peel the waxy layer away from the fabric

4: Now place the 1" strip Right Side up onto the WRONG side of your 2" strip and iron

Et voila. Your 1" strip is now cunningly stuck down, and you don't need to use pins.

Next, press the overlapping edges of the 2" strip down on to the Right Side of the 1" strip, ready for sewing. Straight to the sewing machine now then.....where your fabric suddenly mysteriously turns into a different fabric entirely....hm, weird. Continuity Officer! Emergency!

5: So all you need to do now is be tuck the raw edges under a quarter of an inch, and neatly stitch the folded edge down on to the 1" strip. You can see here the left edge is not stitched yet, and the curling under of the right edge as I tuck in the raw edges.

6: And here is the nice zig-zagged edge, all neat and stitched in place. Repeat with the other edge, and your work here, as they say, is done!

Giveaway Winner

Ooh, and can we just say congratulations to Mairi, who won the TopCat Red Kite Canvas Giveaway from the last post, extoling the virtues of buying handmade. Well done, and can I also say that I know, she's my sister, but I promise you, the Hat and the Names Out Of process was entirely legit!

iPad Shows and Giveaways!

2011-01-25T03:33:00.000-08:00

Well, that was a cruel marketing gimmick wasn't it? Coz while we may be lovely people here at OriginalStitch, I'm not sure we're quite nice enough to give away an iPad. No matter HOW good the Labyrinth game is. Sorry. No. You're not having it.

BUT - we are doing a Giveaway! Onto that in a bit, once I've done a quick reminder on one of our fave OriginalStitch products - anyone get an iPad for Chrimbo? If so, have you got it all wrapped up in a tea-towel with cotton wool stuffed inside? Want something more practical?! Have a look at our fun iPad Slipcase show to a peek at our solution to the cotton-wool stuffed tea-towel. Just click on the images to move 'em around. Fun!

Make a picture slideshow

Britlove Giveaway!

In the last post, we stuck a big old Thumbs Up in the air for stuff made in Britain for our How to Shop Eco series. We championed goods homemade, on these fair isles - good for the environment, good for our economy, and a great way to support your fellow humans, who are making beautiful things just for you, not far from you, in their own homes.

And I promised to pull one out of a hat, buy something from them to show you all how NICE it feels to buy from an artist/maker direct, and then, who'd a thunk it - give it to one of YOU! And that's just what we've done! But before I reveal the winner, here's a little hello to all the lovely folks who scribbled their names with their fair hands - fresh from lathe, kiln, sewing machine, crochet hooks or paintbrushes - and bunged them in our hat.

In absolutely no discernible order whatsoever, say hi to:

FeltLikeStitchin
Angel Eden
Julie Kirk and The Carousel Zebra
Helen Hallows
The Linen Cat
Ditsy Bird Designs
TopCat's Corner
All Creatures Great and Sewn
Bits And Bobs Crafts

Some of these links will be folksy shops, some will be blogs, where people will always link to their shops, and some are their company websites. Go and explore, and see this very tiny taster of lovely things from our land.

And without further ado, the winner is.....

TopCat's Corner !

So off we trundled to her shop, and selected this lovely Kite Canvas, complete with tail - lovely for any kid's room, or to brighten up a winter kitchen.

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning it is this:

Come and Like us at OriginalStitch on Facebook.
For another chance - come Follow OriginalStitch on Twitter

BUT most importantly - say hi in the comment box below and let us know you just did the above! If you haven't entered a blog comp before or done much blog-reading, just select the Name/URL option and then you can just type your comment, leaving your name, but make sure you've liked us on Facebook so we can contact you!

Good luck Peeps
x x x

Top Tips on Shopping Eco 2: Buy British Handmade

2011-01-18T04:16:00.000-08:00

Buy from someone else, please.

Now, in the spirit of truthfulness and for the benefit of all peoplekind, I'm going to recommend to you our competitors.

Er, what?

Not our competitors', ours ours ours!

You know the bit where The Husb claps his hands on his head and pulls handfuls of hair precisely in the opposite direction of the follicles? Yes; this, one such. Ok, so maybe it's not the best business idea, but if I am to promote British, hand-made, locally crafted works of beauty, like our products, then I must champion us all, I tell you. Up the hand-made! So to speak.

Britain is full of such astonishing artistic talent, selling products for, I promise you, much lower prices than you might imagine. So you can buy good-value, beautiful stuff, and do your bit for your carbon footprint by buying British-made.

Latest haul, netted in Charity shops. Look at the chandeliers!

Now we here are all about eco-friendly, so our products use only vintage, pre-loved or recycled materials, but you don't have to go so earth-gentle to do your bit - simply buying from an individual who has made their product on these 'ere shores will be helping to reduce your environmental impact, because you can be sure your product was made in a loving home, not a vast soul-less factory with unhappy workers paid pitiful wages for soul-destroying hours, shipped vast distances to reach you.

Gimme! Gimme names!

Christmas pressie from Quirky Thistle, aka Mum. Keeping me warm one lap at a time

Where to find these things, and be sure they're made here, you might wonder? Many small-scale makers are championed by a great website called Folksy, an amazing treasure trove of artist-makers, working from home, selling their wares. Everything you can buy there will be hand-made, and in most cases unique - that's the bonus of individually made pieces. I'm not talking just fabric, I'm talking ceramics, wood, prints, jewellery, clothing, and a whole bunch more, including the Old Apple Tree whence I fell, though she won't be too pleased about being called Old. Yes, me old Mum will soon have a shop up there to sell her lovely quilts to people for money, instead of making them free, for me.
Darn you.
Darn you all, you greedy, good-for-nothing workshy customers, you!
Sorry. Now I owe her a blog post once her shop's up. And she'll clip my ear when she sees me. Darn it.

And I promise you, these things are often not expensive. I bought many Christmas presents from makers at Folksy, except, I admit, for the toxic unmentionables Father Christmas informed me were on the Daughts' Christmas List. Fair do, Santa, I said. Ones own children are not always the best proponents of ones work. Said Hetty, and I quote, after I foolishly asked her if she liked something I'd made "Not much, Mummy, I don't really like fabric". Or Isla "Yeah, no, I don't like those colours, Mummy, and you know, it's, like, not made from plastic teenage upward inflection and sneer?"
Down we go, aaaaaand Bump. Hi Earth, only me.

Yanyhoo....Notonthehighstreet is another great online retailer pointing you towards fab makers based in Britain. And there are many organisations out there which showcase and promote British designers and makers - you can see my badge here on this blog for UK Handmade, another community which supports the work of UK based makers.

And to top it all, we are delighted to have been approved as a seller on FromBritainWithLove, a beautiful website dedicated to showcasing and routing you to Britain's most talented designers, crafstpeople, producers and retailers. We're thrilled to be on there, because there are some big names and fabulous products on there, and that's very exciting for us. Hoorah! Up the OriginalStitch! You know, I mean, not literally.

So, listen here then - if you're a maker - please leave a comment below with your website, folksy, or facebook details, and if you're a reader-buyer, then do have a look at all these lovely places, and come back to see who's left their details here. I don't mind sharing, because that's another thing - this is a friendly community that helps its fellow crafters out, and for buyers that translates to great customer service. Home makers bust an absolute gut to get customers' orders right for you, ain't that right, you makers? Yeah! Up the workers! So to speak.

And here's some fun: We're going to select a maker at random from the comments, buy one of their products, and offer it as a giveaway in a blog post coming soon.

So, come say hi, leave a little comment and your shop's details. Looking forward to hearing from you! And you reader-buyers, take a little time to check out these places; you'll be happy with what you see.

Frame It - Upcycle Your Old Fabrics into Wall Art

2011-01-13T04:39:00.000-08:00

One of the things we here at OriginalStitch Towers get to notice in our frequent prowls round charity shops, is the kind of stuff that's always there.....and then we try and think of ways to use it. From a business point of view that's sensible coz you know for sure if you have a rush of orders, or need to be able to guarantee a certain supply level to retailers, you'll have enough supply to get you by.

And one thing you always see is picture frames.
I'm right no?
Boxes crammed with 'em. Ok, so sometimes they're really vomit-worthy plastic ones, but most are ok, and they're cheap as chips, if not cheaper, especially if you didn't get the fish or a battered sausage.
Oh, unwise thing to do so close to lunch...can you smell vinegar.....mmmmm......

Um, so, anyhoo....in the spirit of OriginalStitch and our obsession for all things upcyclable, for Amanda Dormouse Moneybag's birthday I went a-rummagin' and dug out some nice old photo frames. Then I got back to OS Towers and waded through my stash, throwing bits of fabric willy-nilly over my shoulder. (I do this in an ever so slightly manic way - it's a bit scary, should you wish to know, like a rabbit trying to get under a fence, or a Husband attempting to find a passport 3 minutes before he's due to fly to Las Vegas in 2010, or similar).

I was given, years ago, a great little collection of old postcards, and have been meaning to turn them into wall art ever since, so I dug it out and found 3 sewing related postcards.

All I did here, and I bet you'd be better at it than me, was to cut a piece of fabric marginally larger than the size of the frame, glue the postcard to the fabric right-side, and then insert into the frame as you would a picture. Even better would have been to glue the fabric to some stiff card, but I didn't have any to hand, so I bodged it a bit, I'm proud to say.

Now, don't stop there, there's a million things you could do to a piece of fabric in a frame. How about these ideas, off the top of my bonce, and therefore by no means the best....

Sew buttons in a heart shape, or to look like cogs interlocking.
Embroider a simple picture over the top - make it unrelated to the fabric for a quirky effect
Use it as a collage - stitch lavender sprigs, leaves, buttons, ribbons, newspaper or magazine off-cuts onto it
Make up quick patchwork pieces to frame - just wallop some 3 inch squares together, you'll only need a few, but it will look great
Use two very contrasting fabrics - cut an easily identifiable shape (a foot? A bird? A sewing machine?) out of the top fabric, and stitch or glue that piece over the other piece.

These make great presents, and they're fab for using up scrippy scraps of fabric, and random bits and bobs you've got lying around. I like the idea of doing them in twos, or a triptych of frames, so you can built a theme into your picture.

To be honest, I was a little peeved Amanda took her pics home. I dropped a considerable number of hints that they would look nice in our little nook of an office here, but no. She weren't 'avin' none of it.

Amanda's beautifully wrapped gifts. Ahem.

Ooh, she's hard that Moneybags.

Top Tips on Shopping Eco 1: Green E-Zines

2010-11-25T02:27:00.000-08:00

Green, Independent, Natural - GinLady.com

I think it's about time I shattered some illusions. As you probably have gathered, I'm now a pretty hardcore eco lifer. You might think this means I recycle all my old shampoo water and knit old noodles into new winter coats for my children, but nooooo.....

I like buying stuff. I do. It's just that I only want to buy things which are from sources that tick the boxes on my ethical radar, but I got to tell yer - being eco does NOT mean not being a shopper. No, no, noooo.....Heck, my business depends on it. Please do come and spend money here at OriginalStitch! We like money! We send you gorgeous eco stuff in return! Nice, no?
And although I don't like spending money on things that don't tick my eco boxes, so to speak, I do like spending money.
Yes I do.

Daisy Green Magazine

Care about the chain....I care about the chain that my money joins when it zips along the wires to a store front. I'd like to know everyone is being paid a fair wage, that they give a monkeys about the environment, recycle in their offices, and worry about the workers in the faraway lands they source their stuff from....

And just to shatter illusions further, don't for one minute think anyone in the fashion business bent on eco will just be knitting crazy shaped hats from alpacas and tie-dyed parsnips; you'll be missing a trick - delve a little further and there are leading lights in the fashion industry setting the standard - and amazing young fashion designers hot on the trail of sustainability in the fashion industry.

But I agree with you on one thing....it's not as easy as walking down a high street. You do have to look around a bit, and online is a searchable way to do it while we wait for all our Bricks & Mortar shops to stock eco options as standard.

Greenzines
So let me start this Top Tips on Shopping Eco by giving you a list of some fab e-zines which are dedicated to following fashion the eco way. Sign up to their newsletters, and they'll bring you the latest eco-deals and launches from fabulous fashion, food, kids, gardening, home, jewellery, you-name-it websites bent on eco. This is by no means an exhaustive list - and if I've missed any - please share in a comment - I'd love more greenzines in my bookmarks.

These places are the first ones I go to if I have decided I want some new boots, a new top, a snood, stocking fillers, pepperpots, hampers, fabrics, paint, coats, cheeseboards, shoes, children's socks, coats, stationery, shoes, printer cartridges, boots, shoes, boots, shoes, coats, boots, shoes....or boots. Oh, and shoes.

TheGinLady
Daisy Green Magazine
Book of Green
The Green Parent

Giveaway: The Book of Rubbish Ideas giveaway - I'm happy to say the winner, drawn at random by a daughter out of a red and orange spotty hat, was Sarah! Your book will be winging its way to you soon Sarah, and thank you x x x

Book Review and Giveaway! The Book of Rubbish Ideas...

2010-11-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

Tracey, communing with her rubbish bin

Well, you can't go wrong with a title like that can you?!

Now, I'm pretty hardcore about eco already (I never buy shampoo for example - wait for a good post on that one coming up soon!) and we never buy cards in this house, we always make them, saving, I have calculated, well over £100 a year. We have a log-maker to turn old newspapers into logs for the fire, and obviously, I run OriginalStitch, a company that is dedicated to using recycled fabrics to make beautiful new things - upcycling. But I still found a bonkersly huge number of tips in this book - it's a right treasure trove.

I'm delighted to have been given a signed copy by the lovely author, broadcaster and econnoisseur Tracey Smith, of her book, The Book of Rubbish Ideas. Tracey featured one of our OriginalStitch iPad Slipcases in her recent radio broadcast on BBC Radio Somerset, and was kind enough to send me a copy of The Book of Rubbish Ideas to give to one of my lucky punters. Signed, no less, which always makes a book feel special.

Now, I have a bit of a problem with my eco outlook sometimes, which is this. Someone (let's say for the sake of argument, which is frequently the result, The Husb) throws something in the wrong bin. Woe betide he who does this because I immediately launch into a witty, erudite, factually accurate and incisive diatribe on how much rubbish goes into landfill every year, how long it takes a piece of bananskin to break down (which is what he's about to do by this point) and with one last final terrifying fact, I cut him right down to size.

Do what it says by the tins, that's my motto.

Yeah right. In my dreams. Here's the actual scenario.

"Oi. Scuze me. Wrong bin"
"Oh bloody hell woman, it's just a banana-skin/tin-can/piece of paper."
"Ah yes, but you know, it doesn't go in that bin, coz, you know, like, landfill's bad, and it should be in the other one, yeh?"

Well that told him didn't it! Full of remorse and a keen desire to rethink his binning strategies, he never again puts a bananaskin or a tin-can or a piece of paper in the Bin of Doom again. Yeah right.

Steps in Tracey to the rescue! Hoooorah to Tracey for her witty book. Full of facts written in a non-preachy, non-apocalyptic way, with appealing, funny little doodles and sketches to break it up, she presents us with some fascinating facts on how we deal with rubbish, and encourages us to get it right. Quite how she manages to tell us all off without sounding at all humourless, or accusatory, I don't know - but she does; it's a great read, and it's an easy read, backed up online by her Book of Rubbish Ideas Blog. You can learn a few facts to reel off at naughty Husbands, or whoever the Accused are in your life who don't toe the line. Facts such as (grabs book, p22....and...."Did you know that plastic 6-pack holders will take 100 years to break down?" or, let's see, grab book, p30...and..."Did you know that 7 out of the 15 most carcinogenic chemicals known to man are used to grow cotton?". Well blow me down. I didn't, and that is one topic I even claim to know about.)

Going Round the Houses

But I'm beating about the bush, because these are just the opening chapters; the real fun starts when she goes round your house, room by room, poking her nose into your intimate corners, so to speak, giving you tips on how you can take a new approach to your lives, bit by bit, one tip at a time, to help you reduce excess and recycle better. Without totally re-hashing the book, here's a few snippets:

How to register so you don't receive junk mail
Popcorn packing: when sending delicate Christmas presents, don't pack with a load of un-recyclable packaging - pack with popcorn! Easy to make by just bunging some popping corn in a pan [but maybe not coated in sugar, so much, even though that really would be a FAB present to receive, would it not?!]
Window-cleaner - don't ever buy it again. Keep an old spray-bottle and use 50:50 vinegar to water and give 'em a wipe with that
Stop putting veg and fruit in millions of plastic bags at the supermarket - just put them all in a bag at the checkout together - apples, carrots, broccoli and so on - they aren't going to get harmed, and you end up with a lovely bag that looks like you've stepped straight out of a Harvest Festival
Pot pourri - make your own, from flowers, leaves, twigs, cones, essential oils and rock salt, instead of using air freshener sprays full of petrochemicals (you're unlikely to read the list of ingredients in that spray, then look each one up and assess its toxicity, let's be honest, even though there is always a hazard warning on there; but suffice it to say they're a bit ridiculous for something that just needs to add a bit of aroma to the air)
Ban the disposable napkins and tissues - use fabric napkins, and hankies (ooh, hey, I know a nice company who make gifts and homewares from recycled fabrics! Have you heard of them? Yes, OriginalStitch, that's right. Oooh they're gorgeous they are, those ladies. Although, ahem, napkins not on the website yet. *Caught-out look on face* Be right with you on that one....!)

I can't tell you how many brilliant ideas there are in this book, and just don't even get me started on the fun Tracey has in your bathroom. If you liked my last post on Bath Bombs and it inspired you to make more toiletries for yourselves then you will LOVE this section.

I urge you to buy it, and start making a difference to your pocket, and your planet, right now.
You can grab your copy at a great big 35% discount here at Sawdays, the publisher. Cheap as chips at under a fiver.

And one lucky reader will get the signed copy!

All you have to do to enter is add yourself as a follower (just click on Follow This Blog on the left sidebar, up there), and then leave me a comment below, making sure you leave contact information in the little contact form. You don't have to say anything exciting, you can just say ooh yes please, but I'd love to hear your favourite eco tip if you have one? You never know, it might make its way into Tracey's next book.
And as for The Husb? Well, I've dumped it on him, let's see if he trashes it or treasures it.

The Husb - is he seeing the light, we wonder?

Gift Special: Make Your Own Bath Bombs

2010-11-09T03:53:00.000-08:00

Ok, so for Hester's 4th birthday, it was Party Bag challenge time again. Those of you who follow me know I'm a right old stingemeister when it comes to party bags, for 2 reasons.
1: They're expensive once you add the cost to the rest of the party
2: They're usually full of plastic tat made in places by poor b***ers with few or no worker rights, working horrendously long hours for very low pay.

So, we sit and wrack our brains each birthday, for production line antics giving us homemade goodies to fob off the kids with. See our spectacularly fantastic meltable crayons for an idea on the stuff we've done in the past.

And this time it was the turn of the Bath Bomb. So, if...
a) You've got a party for kids or grownups coming up and want something to give them
b) You're on the school fund-raising committee, you lucky thing (heh heh), and are looking for Christmas Fair stall ideas you can rope a load of unsuspecting parents into doing (although watch out here - you need to make sure you don't fall foul of public liability insurance, and if these are being sold, will need the recipe tested by a qualified chemist!)
c) You have 87 children with between them 453 teachers and you're looking for their end of term Christmas and thank you pressie
c) You're looking for some Christmas present ideas...

Then this is the fella!

And if it's even remotely possible, these were even more fun to make. We based our recipe on the delicious and medicinally herbacious James Wong's Grow Your Own Drugs recipe; and this is a book I urge you to buy - because if you think Bath Bombs are fun to make, then you'll love getting down and dirty with beeswax and porridge oats and almond oil and....I tell you, there is nothing like using your own homemade moisturiser for a whacking great dose of smugness.

Wanyhoo...here's what you'll need (I'll give you a lovely supplier at the bottom too, from whom I religiously get all my stuff, without fail, and am always shocked at how fast she manages to deliver it to me.)

3 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp citric acid powder
Up to 10 drops Essential oils
1 tsp flower petals, dried fruit peel, herbs (optional)
Half tsp edible/non-toxic glitter (optional)
1 tsp vegetable based oil, such as Sunflower Oil or other, such as Almond/Avocado/Coconut oil

1 mixing bowl
Spoons
Fork
Small mould trays or moulds

A Word about the Moulds...

We used a chocolate mould, but you could also use different shaped cookie cutters placed on a baking tray with baking parchment/greaseproof paper on, which works well because you can ease then 'pop' them out easily.

I would advise you use fairly small moulds, because we made large hearts and to be fair, the bath was a little overrun with oils and petals and glitter, much to my amusement, but my clean and tidy friends' disgruntlement....chortle.
Bendy type baking moulds are brilliant if you have them.
If using a soap mould, check it is one suggested for use with bath bombs - we actually found our seashell shapes soap mould too stiff - we couldn't get the bath bombs out without breaking them.

Right. Ready, what do I do?

First things first - KEEP ALL WATER AWAY! Dry your hands, dry your kids' hands.
Mix all the dry ingredients in the bowl, ensuring you break up the lumps with your fork and mix the ingredients well
Drizzle the oil into the mixture and stir in with the fork, so that the oil is well distributed
Add the essential oils and stir well
Now spoon the mixture into your moulds and pat down well
Leave overnight so that the oils can evaporate, leaving a nice hard tablet for your bath bomb.
To use, simply pop in the bath and watch it fizz!

And I'm guessing you're very creative people so I leave it to you to wrap and gorgeous 'em up - we wrapped ours in greaseproof paper and ribbon; and sometimes we illegally steal transparent packaging bags from OriginalStitch to put them in. But don't tell Bizzo Partner Amanda Moneybags or she'll 'ave me guts for garters. Look out for little baskets in charity shops, and line with tissue paper or fabric before laying your wrapped bathbombs in them. Hey, you could wrap them in fabric. Cover them in pretty stickers; make labels; wrap in garden string for a rustic look; add a sprig of herbs in the outside packaging; oooooh I mean, you must be full of ideas!

So, where to buy?

I get all my stuff from the lovely Summernaturals. They stock all but the edible glitter (and she may well have that too if you ask, I wouldn't be surprised!). I make all my own cleaning products, and a fair few toiletries, and Summernaturals is my No.1 supplier - she has a fantastic range of products, and does them in hilariously massive bulk sizes too, if you so desire. Plus she's extraordinarily helpful if you need a hand, or aren't quite sure what you need.
Say hi from me!

A Manly Punch, or One For the Ladies?

We had a load of fun with our essential oils, trying to choose ones we thought were for ladies, or ones which would make a very masculine manly sort of fragrance. And of course, the daughters said that for the man ones blue glitter should be used. I'm thinking actually, girls, maybe NO glitter in the man ones? They're not all like your father you know. Snigger.

It's entirely personal of course, and fun experimenting - but I would recommend using no more than 3 different oils in one mixture, and using one as a 'main' oil, with 6 drops or so, and the others to complement.

Manly Essential Oils: Clary Sage, Basil, Thyme, Eucalpytus, Tea Tree, Rosemary, Peppermint, Pine, Sandalwood, Sweet Orange, Lime, Lemon,

Ladies Indulgence Oils: Lavender, Rose, Geranium, Sweet Orange, Tea Tree, and actually - anything floral or fruity.

Anyhoo, so here's some suggestions on scent combos you could use for men's bath bombs:

For a robust, liqourice scent: Basil, Thyme, Eucalyptus
For an after sports special: Eucalyptus, Tea Tree, Basil
For a refreshing zing: Tea Tree, Lime, Peppermint
For a fruity, lively bath: Lime, Sweet Orange, Lemon
For a relaxing soak: Lavender (1 drop) Sweet Orange (3 drops) Clary Sage (6 drops)

Of course, these are all lovely, and don't only have to be for blokes, for goodness sake. Geezers however might be fussy about too feminine a scent, and certainly the herb based oils are really very masculine. For ladies' bath bombs, the bath is your oyster, but here are a few if you're looking for a shopping list!

Pure Relaxation: 7 drops Lavender, 2 drops Sweet Orange Oil, and 1 drop of either thyme, basil, or clary sage
Bright and Zesty: Tea tree, Lime and Sweet Orange
Deep-Breathingly Floral: 6 drop Geranium, 4 drops Rose
Balancing and Deep: 7 drops Geranium, 1 drop Tea-Tree, 2 drops Basil
Exotic and Warm: 6 drops Jasmine, 2 drops Geranium, 2 drops Rose

And well, I could go on, but if you're strapped for cash, my two essential Essentials are Lavender and Tea-tree, which serve a multitude of purposes round the house, and can be the staples of a Lady or Man Bath Bomb.

Like this bowl? Go check out her wares at http://woolboutique.blogspot.com

Once you're all done, you might want to add labels to your bath bombs, with ingredients, and instructions, especially if you're selling them at fairs, or giving as gifts, just to be on the safe side. Just click below to download my example sheet, and if you're editing them, keep within the lines so you can print onto A4 sheets, which have three columns of stickers 63.5x38mm in dimension.
Bath Bomb Label Ideas

Go, bomb, have fun!

The Things Kids Say...

2010-11-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Before we start, I can hear you saying "Aw....aren't they sweet....". Well don't. Coz I can tell you now we only have one of those Snow White dresses. And there are two here. We DO NOT KNOW where the other came from.
Thieves.
I have thieves for daughters.
Anyway, moving on.

Exam Questions of the Day

Here are today's questions for your perusal. This is why you need to have eaten the Encyclopaedia Brittanica to spend all day every day in half-term week with two small curious persons.

1. "Why is it dark in Norway for 3 months of the year?"
Witness me holding an imaginary planet Earth in my hands, up in the air, turning it whilst simultaneously sashaying round the kitchen table, which was being The Sun, obviously.

Words used: Axis, rotating, seasons, and orbit. Really quite a lot. They're 4 and 5 for Heaven's Sake.

2. "What is the Olympics? Where does it come from?"

And yes, I did correct them, of course.
"Are. Are the Olympics."
"Why are?"
"Because it's Olympics plural."
"What does plural mean?"
"It means, it's, it's more that one."
"More than one what?"
"Ok, never mind plurals, let me tell you about Daley Thompson and Fatima Whitbread."

Words used: discus, javelin, pole vault, shot put, Olympians, Paralympics, decathlon, triathlon.
And I believe I also used the expression lovely big strapping handsome men rowers.
"And lady ones?"
"Yes, also lovely big strapping lasses in boats too, yes."

3. "How do they build cars?"

"On a big machine."
"Do they build lots of cars at once, or just one at a time?"
"Good question, well done - lots at once, it's called a production line."
"What's a production line?"
"Well, I've just said haven't I, it's a big lot of machines used to build lots of cars all at once, in a line, all in a line."
"Does it only build cars?"
"No, a production line can be used to build lots of things. Please don't ask what other things."
"What other things?"

4. "Is there orange sticky stuff in Space?"

I...you....
Pardon??

Choice Quotes from Exasperated Mothers and Curious Kids.

I'm afraid Half-Term at OriginalStitch consisted mainly of nippers. In this picture they have built a den. Clearly they weren't impressed by the infiltration of a camera through the hole in their wall. There was popcorn in that bowl. And a DVD nearby, in a vain attempt on my behalf to Do Some Work In My Office. Not a lot of work was done, mind you, either by myself or Amanda or apparently by any of our Stitchers, as is plainly asserted by this lot.

Isla: These slippers are magic.
Me: Are they? What's magic about them?
Isla: There's a special button on them, which if you press it they'll hand you out a fish pie.

I mean, please someone, market that slipper! Who WOUDLN'T want a slipper that handed out food? Brilliant! I hooted for days after that one. Made me spit my tea out. However, waaaay too much time spent in half term on getting dressed, which yielded this song from Hetty, to the tune of Louby Lou

No, no, I don't want tights,
No, no, I don't want tights,
No, no, I don't want tights,
and I don't want leggings eeeeeeee-therrrrr......

I at one point heard myself saying "Isla, is that getting dressed or is that jumping up and down on the bed wearing a tutu and swinging goggles round your head?"
This behaviour from the child who also said, in absolute disgust "Why aren't the days of the week in alphabetical order?"

Stitcher Katie also found getting dressed a rich source of nonsense. Like me, she often finds the stuff coming out of her own mouth just as daft as that coming from her kids, like this one:

"Hannah, will you stop emptying the knicker drawer, Lucy's only got one bottom!"

Not to mention having overheard this bizarre exchange in a local shop between her daughter and husband:

"Daddy, can we have one of these for our boat?"
"No, Lucy"
"Why not?"
"Because we haven't got a boat, Lucy!"

Just before half-term, Amanda's daughter came excitedly out of school proclaiming that for the first time ever in her life she had done SEWING! She found it quite amazing, and then said,
"Can you sew, Mummy?"
Amanda was dumbfounded. "Considering the massive piles of fabric round the house, and me sitting at a sewing machine whenever I can, you'd think she'd have noticed." she said. Like I said, mine once told me they didn't like things made from fabric because they weren't pink and shiny. Nuff said. Kids bring your ego right into line.

Stitcher Beverley swanned off on a second honeymoon over half-term, so merely had the mutterings of a husband to contend with, but she told me the first thing her Isla said to her on return was

"Where's my present?"
...which is nice.

The other one informed her that her favourite thing about staying with Aunty Bella all week was having Chocolate Loops for breakfast every day.
And Auntie Bella slopes off into the bushes...

Stitcher Jennie's little boy informed her that he is not cute, he is Max. Unfortunately he undid this assertion a little by pointing to a cactus and calling it a hedgehog. Sorry Max but that IS cute! More growling and gnashing of teeth required to lose the cute label I'm afraid!

Hester informed me over half-term that she wanted to be a pole-dancer. Now look, I'm not averse to some alternative art-forms, I'm really not. I don't mind a tattoo, she can get piercings, I don't really care about what clothes she ends up wearing, but pole-dancing? I'm not convinced I can get behind that.
It transpired later that she was referring to the barre used in ballet classes.

She also had a slight inferiority about her eyeballs, thinking they didn't have nice red lines in them like Isla's. It's a bizarre day when you find yourself saying "There's nothing bad about your eyeballs Hetty. You've got lovely eyeballs."

And anyone who can make sense of this question...

"How do you say thank you for my lunch without your teeth?"...is a better cryptographer than me. Took me ages to decode that one.

Turns out she's asking about sign language....

Going to Great Lengths

2010-10-09T05:24:00.000-07:00

When people ask about the costs of my business (I mean, fernickety scary people like accountants and bank managers and ones who like maths), quite apart from getting scared and wanting to shout "It just works, ok!" I do sometimes sound rather vague and unconvincing.
This is because they want me to say (put on robotic voice)

"The production costs are £x.y."

But instead I say things like (put on voice suggesting I'm slightly under the influence.)

"Um, well, I mean, it kind of like depends on how much the fabric cost, in a way, yeah...?"

Well. I'm going to try and fix that here, and then I shall just direct 'em to this blog post. I'll just hold my hand up in their faces and say

"Yup. Can I stop you there? Say it to the hand, coz this face? Yep. You got it. Just get your people to speak to my people Blogside, yuh?"

I can work out how much our labels cost, our stickers, our tags, because yes, we order those in from nice eco-friendly printers. But our stitchers are working with second-hand fabrics from all sorts of sources, many free, so I can't simply do some maths based on the latest per metre cost of a supplier's fabric, and I don't know what my stitchers have discovered in their neighbour's attic, or found on freecycle, or rooted up from the bowels of charity shops....or stolen from bins....do they do that I wonder??

Anyhoo...no matter where they got their fabrics, you can bet your bottom dollar it was a bargain.

Check out my latest goodies, price tags left on, so we can do some maths. Don't you just love a bit of maths of a mornin'? Hm? Ok, so if you squint a bit to look at those fabric lengths there and convert the quantities here into the same units (I did this in my head.
Yeah, I did.
I did.
Honestly.
I did.
Honest.
Guv'nor.
Ok, it's a fair cop. I sooooo didn't. I used the conversion thingybob on my mac. Oh I love my mac!)
.....and then add 'em up (also done in my head. Honest. I did.
Not.)
...you'll find this lot comes to 6.7m worth of fabrics plus that greeny one there, which is 2m. And then if you further add up the amounts of spondoolicks paid (I did this using an old abacus and the Aramaic system of counting, I did) then you might discover that I paid Thirteen English Pounds, which is the same as 2,313 Icelandic Krona, 75 Qatari Rials, 10,012 Chilean Pesos, and Twenty Big Fat US Dollars.
Then, using perhaps ancient Chinese counting rods, and quite possibly Pythagoras' theorem, for all I know, you would discover that this fabric cost £1.58 per metre. Which is of course, 3,062 Kazakhstan Tenge.

Then, supposing most products don't use anything like a metre's worth of fabric, rather, let's say, if we calculate the percentage of a metre of fabric used for the Pencil Roll, (I like using papyrus and soot for writing down my thinkings), then we'd discover that only about a quarter of a metre is used. Which is 39 pee, as we like to say here, in English money.

That'll be 59 of the Swiss' finest Cents. And 63 of the Canadians'.

And this is all good - because the lower the costs, the more the profit.
And the higher the profit, the higher the amount we can pay our hard-working, skillful, creative, earnest and dedicated Stitchers for making products which are unique, made-to-order, beautifully stitched and lovingly packaged.

And that is the kind of maths I like.

Come on a Factory Tour!

2010-09-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Hooorah kazaaaaah!

We have at last re-housed our OriginalStitch manual to a new building. This is the Overview Chapter. It's sitting very pretty in lovely YUDU-land, where the pages flippetty flap about (turn the sound up, it's just delicious - I really want a button on me that I can press to make that sound. No. People, whatever you're saying in your head about buttons and noises - stop it. You're all just rude.) and you can zoom in and click on the links to the stuff and put post-it notes on and all sorts of stuff. It's a great resource.

So have a little look! I'd love to know your thoughts.

Basically, when you're an OriginalStitcher (and you can apply in loads of places - the website, or becoming a member of The OriginalStitch Cafe, and here too, once I've put the button on the sidebar, ahem) this is your manufacturing manual. Everything you need to know to make our products is there, and actually there's quite a lot of handy things for anyone who makes stuff, from how to choose fabrics combinations, to the best places to get second-hand stuff.

And you know what else - it's like a factory tour for customers. We're all about openness here at OriginalStitch - it was always very important to me that we be transparent and honest and accountable in all our actions, so I don't mind who reads it. There's no secrets, no 'just glue the label on, never mind quality, they won't know...', we don't go in for money for old rope tactics. I think customers who read it will like seeing the love, effort and care that goes into products when they're made by stitchers in their own homes, with care and creativity, and paid a fair wage; and as a company we can help to herald the swing towards valuing the artisanship of beautiful handmade and homemade stuff everywhere.

At the moment the manual is in 6 different 'chapters', with more on their way, but we will in the near future have it as one nice big magazine. I've put the flipbook for one chapter for you here, but just come and search OriginalStitch any time at YUDU and you should find all our stuff. And some other very interesting publications too, like, as my sister was quick to point out - Alpaca Magazine. Marvellous.

Come see!

The OriginalGlitch Cafe

2010-09-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Oooooh, I'm mad. I am. I'm as mad a hopping frog. You ask Dormouse Moneybags, as I now call bizzo partner Amanda, and she'll tell you how she's been nearly falling asleep with boredom as I regale her with the latest in the Saga Of Ning.

Ning is the online application we use for our stitcher social network, and it does its job very well, don't get me wrong....

Only every now and then in this luscious business of ours we have big fat obstacles that come carrumphing down in our way (I know. It's not a word, no. It's not. I just made it up.) and we have to skirt round the obstacles sharpish.

One such is that Ning have begun charging for usage - not vast amounts, but more than we'd like to have to pay frankly, and as a consequence, we have lost some of our functionality on there. That being all the OriginalStitch Manual stuff. The OriginalStitch Manual contains everything you need to know about being a stitcher, making the products, packaging them, sending them and how you get paid. So losing it entirely, well, THAT'S not a pain in the harris at all is it....oh no, hang on, it's a huge pain in the harris!

However. Don't panic. If there's one thing we have learned in this fabulous OriginalStitch journey it's that we have SAS-like capacity to get round obstacles. We whack on a helmet, strap on a toolbelt, whip out a bunch of tools and we wriggle and squirm our way out of things like spies in Spooks, who as you know, always have a little sewing-kit in their pockets for dangerous situations, and before you know it - pop! - up we come somewhere else, neatly avoiding the obstacle.

And so we have done in this case, although let me tell you, it was a giant inconvenience for us. Time is the one thing we have the very least of, and we like to spend it doing nice things like, ooh, designing and sewing and sewing and designing and taking orders and eating cakes....
Not frantically re-writing 30 pages of significant company information till me eyes fall out me bonce.

Just like our tag threads, we're scrappy!

However, the solution we have found is just soooooooo much purrtier! Boy there are some amazing opensource applications on the tinkleweb, and the one we have found to house our manual makes it look famdabbydoozy.

And this is the reality of working for yourself, in a small business - often challenges that seem disastrous initially bring forth new and wholly unexpected benefits. Our new OriginalStitch Manual isn't quite ready yet, but it will be soon, and we are so delighted with how it will work now.

Well, lawks. Who knew how long it would have taken us to change had the disastrous not occurred?
So, thank you Ning, for being a little bit awkward, and forcing us to go scavenging round the tinkleweb again. We are feeling just a little bit smug.

And hello YuDu, who will be housing our OriginalStitch Manual soon. Watch this space!

Dabble in the Double

2010-07-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

Double-sided fusible interfacing...

Don't you think that's the most terrifying string of words ever? I found it very intimidating when I first read that in a sewing pattern somewhere. I was all, what the devil is that, for heaven's sake?! And where the blunkers do you get it from?!

Well, you can get the stuff in most haberdashers, to be honest. It's quite hard to explain why this stuff is handy, because it's a bit like explaining the benefits of glue.
"Glue rocks. Coz it's really sticky and sticks things together."
No kidding.

So, enough of that. Here's a handy, or rather hearty, tutorial to get you off to a flying start with the wonders of Double-Sided Fusible Interfacing. You don't need the stiff stuff, or even the light fabric stuff - you need the stuff that looks like paper.

Right. Gimme a list of stuff I need to forage for.
1m of lightweight Double-Sided Fusible Interfacing
Lots of pretty strips and scraps and scrippy scrappy bits of fabric, motifs from old clothes etc
Larger fabric triangles, approx 7" sided
Card Templates of hearts, or little birds, or whatever shape you'd like on your bunting
Pinking shears if you have them
Iron and Ironing Board
Sewing machine and threads, optional

Start by sorting through lots of lovely bits of fabric and iron them all. Or even, don't bother ironing them. My mum wouldn't. She says she never irons anything before she sews it. Shocking!
Cut a piece of dsfi, say 8"x14", although it doesn't really matter. We wanted to make loooooooads of hearts for our bunting, but once you have a project in mind - you decide.

Now arrange and then iron the fabrics onto the dsfi with a cotton hot iron. I'd advise laying some old bit of cloth on top, so that if any cheeky dsfi is exposed, your iron won't touch it and get goo on.

Choose your template and draw round it on the reverse of your ironed fabric scraps. Don't throw away any bits left over - keep every last bit; I'll show you what you can do with the tiny scraps later

Cut out, and carefully peel away the waxy paper. This will be quite flimsy, so have your bunting triangles handy, ready to place your shape onto, the mesh-like sticky stuff facing down

Iron onto the bunting triangles
Now the fun part - find a really bright contrasting thread - or black, which looks amazingly effective with pastels and pretty cottons, and zigzag stitch along all the fabric joins, and round your shape. Oh my word how great does that look?! But hey - if you don't have a sewing machine, look at the hearts above - they weren't stitched along the joins - you could just iron them onto your fabric triangles.

Once you've done them all, stitch lots of torn scruffy strips of fabric about 1" wide together, and using zigzag stitch sew your bunting triangles to the wrong sides of the strip.

What I'm saying is, I suppose, be creative - it might be hearts on bunting, or these lovely birds, which I'm actually going to turn into little Bannister Birds - two stitched together with a ribbon out the top, and stuffed with old tiny scraps of fluff, and hung from my bannisters.
Or, and here's what you do with all those little leftover bits of ready-dfsi'd fabrics - make card art. Give as cards, with a message inside telling the recipient to get a frame and stick it in!
Or even, do that yourself.
It's just that I was too lazy, so I made it into a birthday card for a dear friend, and told her she could find the bleedin' frame for herself. Nice aren't I?
Ahem.
And on that note - I'm on holiday for a week! We are going to sunny Devon, to frolic in waves and lick ice-creams and eat lashings of scones and cream and drink multiple cups of tea and then have fish and chips by the sea....
Save you some, I promise.

Hols and Rolls and Patterns and Polls

2010-07-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

Well, to be honest I was abducted by aliens, and when I refused to divulge OriginalStitch patterns, they eventually let me back down to earth, and that's why I haven't done a blog post for ages.
Oh, no, hang on, sorry, that's a big fat lie.

It's coming up to the next blasted set of school holidays and I'm getting my crazy talk ready. A week at home with the 3 year-old and I'm already mentally exhausted by her questions and statements. I mean, how ARE you meant to answer this:
"Mummy, why is that fly not a bee?"

Best answer from my facebook status on the matter was "Coz it's not yellow and stripey".

Tomorrow the 5 year old finishes school, and I thanked the lord for our Patterns - roll up, Pencil Roll. Do you know, I have such an appalling memory. I couldn't remember at all how to make one. I dug out some truly bonkers grown-up fabrics for this one. I actually at one point closed my eyes and dove headfirst into an enormous laundry basket of fabrics and made myself use whatever three I picked out. Brave, eh?! And I found it quite amusing that I was poring over the very sewing recipe I WROTE less than 6 months ago. Couldn't remember a sausage. Although, as I texted proudly to Amanda, who is now my OriginalStitch co-thingy, it's nice and easy to follow! So who cares that my memory is like a chicken's?

To give me my due, I suppose it is because my brain as been rammed full of all the other stuff we've been doing! Let me tell you a bit - gosh, I don't know where to start, but basically we've been heading full tilt towards our first proper recruitment drive for OriginalStitchers. We've been having our Patterns gorgeously overhauled by our very talented designer, Jon. We've been working our little harrises off on the OriginalStitch Cafe - which is our social network for the stitchers. We've designed the gorgeous iPad Slipcase and rushed it in to the store. We've been, oh, I can't remember. Loads and loads of things.

But for you, who are stitchers yourselves, and let's face it, might not be our first port of call for buying our products, we hope you'll instead like the fact that we're selling the Patterns for our the products alongside them. Now there's a first! Coz we realised pretty early on that they are two almost totally mutually exclusive camps - people who can make stuff, and people who can't. You lot, most of you - can. Hoorah! So now, (or rather, over the next few months as we transfer all our recipes into our lovely new fresh design template, and get them uploaded onto the website) you can see the product, want it, and pay a fraction of the cost by buying the recipe. They're just a few pounds each, and you can download 'em right there and then.

Then, hotfoot it over to the OriginalStitch Cafe, where you can join up for pattern support, and help us build a nice network for stitchers. Heck, you can just come and join anyway, if you like, there's some useful stuff for anyone in a business, like how to set up a royal mail account, plus some tips on how to combine fabrics, and how to scrounge for second-hand fabrics. In time, and with articles and how-to's and other useful stuff, you might even be able to add to it - we'll be paying for content.

Available right now are the Backpack Recipe, and the Pencil Roll recipe, and the iPad Slipcase will be available really soon too - so if you know someone with one, this'll keep it safe!

We recommend sneaking into your husband/partner/brother/dad's shirt cupboard in the dead of night, preferable attired in burgler gear, like maybe a nice quilted balaclava, or knitted stripey tights over your head, and stealing his shirts.

They do make just the nicest iPad Slipcases.

Ooooh! And p.s - please, you women, with your handbags - fill in our What's The Perfect Handbag survey!

Eco Tip 1 - Party Bunting!

2010-06-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

Oh boy have I been having fun with plastic bags!

Ok, so that's not an auspicious start to any article, but hello there - what, more school holidays? Yes, in the flash of an eye we seem to be upon another one. So OriginalStitch has had to cast its creative net wider. The Daughters just weren't up for uploading images of our up and coming Office Collection onto the website. (They will have to soon. 'Bout time they started pulling their weight.)

But I can assure you we found a project that is good clean eco fun, with a healthy does of potential ironing injuries and possible asphyxiation via the means of toxic fumes. Which I think we can all agree is an acceptable level of daily danger. I mean, you think about it - what have you got in your workroom? Pins....scissors....rotary cutters....one heck of selection of glues and adhesives and 14 tones of dangerously towering stashes of fabric.
So, all in all we're talking stabbings, prickings, amputations, toxic poisoning and squashings.
Never let it be said that craft is a gentle art.
Oi! Health and Safety! Got a live one here! Well it IS half-term, so one needs to find child-appropriate activities, and they're just not fun unless they're a bit dangerous. It was either this or climbing the apple tree, which is hugely fun, but we needed something to show for our efforts. I like a result.

Um, anyhoo - so, inspired by this excellent tutorial here, which nearly made me hyperventilate with excitement (you can see from my comment on there how excited - it has made-up words in it and everything. My level of excitement can almost always be measured by the number of neologisms contained therein) I decided to have a crack at making some party bunting, for a party we're having for me and The Husb's birthdays. Sorry, The Husb's and my birthdays. The Husb and mine birthdays. Our birthdays.
Ok, I don't mean to criticise the language of Shakespeare but there are times when English just doesn't cut it. How ARE you meant to phrase that??

As you can see we dug out a load of bits of spangly glittery loopiness, and we had an afternoon of fun making these. The daughters got involved, and it was really quite an artistic endeavour. You could get seriously arty farty with it because you layer up your plastics and then melt it all together and get some great results. You could use different coloured plastic bags to make patterns or even pictures, including letters to make personalised bunting. What a great present that would be! If I'd thought ahead could have done our names, but you know, hindsight and all that blah, so we'll go with whatever.

We used garden string for ours for a rustic look, and didn't need a needle because it's pretty prickly stuff anyway. Worked perfectly.
When the girls were making theirs I gave them piles of ready-cut triangles and they combined them and stuck little bits of stuff in, ready to hand over the to their mother at the ironing board. We hole-punched the finished flags and then I threaded them through, with a knot behind each hole so they can flip and flap in the wind, but basically not move around too much, or overlap.

This, for your information, is where the excellent Broadband will play - how fun is that? They will sit 'neath spangly party bunting and play toons for us to dance to (yes, people, a barndance) and when I've had enough of the dancing, I shall take up me fiddle and get in there under the bunting and give the tunes a punt myself.

A perfect English summer garden party! Bunting and fiddles. Whatever you use it for, I implore you - give this a go, it is SUCH fun. Go, go - dig out those plastic bags!

5 Things I Love About Sewing....

2010-05-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

These days, I don't have a lot of time for sewing - it's become something of a rare treat, because I mostly have my sleeves rolled up to the elbows and my hand shoved up the front or back end of websites. Metaphorically speaking of course, but you get my drift. Although I'm not physically wrestling with some kind of giant stitchery cow, my poor brain does feel like I'm a vet getting stuck in with big rubber gloves on.
Um. Ok, at this point even I'm raising my eyebrows at myself. Er, hello, Catherine - vets? Rubber gloves? Metaphorical cows? Shall we move on? Shall we?

Anyway, obviously I like sewing, or I most probably would NOT have launched OriginalStitch, I'm thinking......so here's my 5 Things I Love About Sewing.
Come join in - tell me, what do you love about sewing?
And also - a better title please than 5 Things I Love About Sewing, which is very dull indeed and gets no better for typing it twice.

1 Making something new...
You know why? Because it always surprises you. I mean, I'm always making new things - this whole company is built on the premise that I am rrrrrrrrubbish at making the same thing twice, hence needing a Stitcher Network - but I'm talking about making something outside my normal realm. And in this case it's this little fella.

If you recall, it was Isla's big fat 5th birthday recently, and having taken our turn at the bar and thrown a party for her whole class, including entertainer (I bow down to thee, O Oscar), I was not then going to fork out for some giant piece of plastic princess thingness. I sent her into my Workroom, and told her she could choose a pattern from my many books, and then some fabrics, and I would make something for her. And this is what she chose.

Do you know, I have never made a stuffed toy. I think I anticipated that it would be a chore - that I should be working instead, should be using sewing time to invest in a new OriginalStitch prototype. And therein lies the krux of the matter - it's very easy when you make your living from what you love, to forget to add some of what you love in how you live. I made this for my daughter, and made it doing what I love.

So, by making something new, and different, I had a moment of clarity in my life. In a cluttered busy world, we don't always have room for clarity.

2 The fabrics others choose...

And this little elephant brings me to another thing I love - I love seeing the fabrics other people choose. In this case, Isla, who is, as we all know, Big Fat 5. And look at the fabrics she chose - she really surprised me. I mean, they go very well together, but I was not expecting such classic heritage fabrics from a 5-year old. I thought she'd zoom in on some gaudy candy pinks, like I have with number 3, but no, this is what she chose. Maybe she's an old soul.

When we did our first 'workshop' back when I was looking for stitchers, I let my now co-OriginalStitcher Amanda loose on my fabric stash. We were making the backpack, and I said, ok, here's the recipe, now choose the fabrics. She hovered, overawed at the fabric dresser, and said, really? Anything? And I said, yes anything. Well, except this (whisked it away) oh, and not this either (wwhhhisk...). And, um, you're not having this either, lady...(wwhhhhoooooosh.....)
Anyway, after she had chosen, I was so surprised at her combo - she chose greens and yellows and yellow thread and green thread; and I have NEVER in my life used yellow thread. Not once. I suddenly realised I'm a real reds/blues person, or a red/pinks person. Red is a big one for me. Green and yellow? Naaaahh....

I love how our brains, housed in heads which have taken millenia to evolve and are basically the same, can choose such different things. Now that makes me smile. And is very handy, or there'd be enormous fights breaking out over fabric stashes the world over. Thank heavens.

3. Unique, never-seen-before fabric combinations

Ok, so again, I know this is the whole foundation of what is lovely about OriginalStitch, and all you folksyiers and etsyiers and boutiquers out there - the combining of fabrics, but seriously, it gives me such a thrill every time. It's like language. Every day we utter sentences never before heard. I'm pretty sure no-one has ever said "I'm not physically wrestling with some kind of giant stitchery cow" in the whole history of spoken or written language before, and likewise, I'm prepared to bet not a single soul on this planet ever put these three precise fabrics together.
Now that's a bit awe-inspiring isn't it?
Like when you look up at the stars and go, but how? How can space just go on and on and on? Where does it go to? What's at the edge?
Well, I think a new fabric combo is pretty astronomical too. Cosmic.

4. Pins. But more importantly, pin cushions.

Don't you just love 'em?! I don't even use pins as much as I should - I'm too lazy and naughty, but when I do use them, I love grabbing 'em out of their pin-cushions, and I love stabbing 'em back in mid-foot. (I'm talking about my foot, on the sewing-machine accelerator, speeding along a heady zig-zag. See that odd little zig-zag kink up there in the pinks? Bet you that was when I was putting a pin away. Bet you twenty-seven dollars. That's £18.50, people.)

My mother claims every time I see her, and she sets eyes again on this hat pin-cushion, that I stole it from her. That it was hers is undoubtedly true, but I didn't steal it. Or if I did I've forgotten. So I might have done. "Well, take it then, if you want it back..." I say, but she just shrugs and says, no you can keep it if you like, and then I say, we have this conversation every time you know, and she says, I'm pretty sure you stole it from me, and I say well why would I have it on display then, bold as brass, and she says, maybe I gave it to you, and I say, or maybe I stole it, I can't remember. Neither can I she says. And then we have a cup of tea, probably.

5. Thinking time....
I should actually sew far more than I do. You know why? Apart from the obvious answer - "Um, duh, because that's kind of the basis of what you DO for a living, Catherine...". Which is enough in itself really, but let's look at why....
Because when I sew, I think. When I'm working on PR, or marketing, or if I'm injecting fresh images into a website with my metaphorical veterinary syringe of creativity (seriously, what the....?) there is no room for thinking, because I'm already on high intensity thinking as it is.
When I'm sewing, even though I'm concentrating and following a pattern, there is room for a little sneaky bit of thinking.
I have discovered that when I sew, I get ideas. Or answers to problems that have been vexing me. Or suddenly I will see the big picture of an issue I'm working on and realise I'm looking at it from the wrong angle. Or I will suddenly hear a voice in my head (no kidding, you're thinking, that's becoming pretty clear from this post, lady...) - something someone said which I had forgotten, and which has quietly come out of the brain's filing cabinet in answer to a problem.
Sewing is freeing - it frees my mind, because it's mainly my hands and feet and eyes that are busy, and my mind has a little free space to fidget in.
I never forget now to take with me my notebook, and it sits there, waiting for me to scribble in it, because what my mind frees up, I grab and write down, before I forget it again.

Petits Fives

2010-04-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

When my girls, or gargoyles as we lovingly call them, started being at school and preschool more and more, and I thought, ooh, more time on my hands, brilliant, I shall start a business and have loads of time to do it in, I did of course forget about holidays. School ones. There's a few aren't there? And as I teeth-grindingly point out to The Husb when he talks about me having more time on my hands, you will find that the hours of available porportedly 'full-time' time fit themselves only into 31 weeks a year.
Goodness.
How do they learn a thing at school, I wonder?!
31 weeks. Of which 2 have just occurred. And pop an Easter, a holiday abroad and a 5th birthday into that melting pot, and the convoluted point I'm getting to is that OriginalStitch has been cruelly abandoned for 3 weeks. 2 of which consisted of the ankle-biters being around, and 1 of which consisted of the carnage-clearing from those 2 weeks.

Don't get me wrong, we had a lovely, lovely 2 weeks off, even if I did mercilessly exploit the daughters by treating our entire holiday like a Mallorcan Photoshoot, and screaming inanely "Logo on the outside! Turn it round! The Backpack! Logo on the outside!" as The Husb advanced across airport concourses to the toilet with a small Hetty in tow, but I was able to dedicate little time to the rigours of running my business. So I sit here thinking, well, Blog, what shall we do?

Nothing for it but to digress and talk about party bags.

So, Isla was big fat 5, which I think we can all agree is a Very Big Deal in the Life of a Person of that Age. And having just started school, she is getting to know her little pals, whom she will grow up with for the next um, however many it is years until secondary school. So, I thought, it's our turn to go to the bar - we will do the whole class party thing, sans parents, but I am not, repeat, not being the party entertainer and putting on crafts and games and puzzles and so on. Oh no. So in came Dazzling Dave as The Husb refers to him, but whose name was actually Oscar, to entertain 28 nippers in a church hall.
And thank all that is good in the world for Oscars, for he performed miracles, and not a single child cried. The Husb and I were fairly appalling waiters but the children got fed, several poured drinks down themselves, there were minimal toileting necessities and, thank heavens, none who needed assistance in the Number Twos department, and all in all a jolly good afternoon with plenty of hilarity, shrieking, letting off of steam and massive giggling was had.
But with investment into Oscar, I made a decision, which was that I was not going to then also spend a fortune on party bags, party bag innards, tablecloths, plates, cups, straws, party poppers, balloons and so on. You know, the fun stuff. No.
Nice aren't I?

But I couldn't stomach sending the children off with no party bag, because you have to be very, very strong to stand there while 25 children look up at you in turn, in a queue, and say "Where's my party bag?"
Don't tutt, you lot - you know perfectly well your child has said it themselves. And if you're saying, no my little one would never say that, I'm telling you, bet they have. You just didn't hear 'em. Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging - it's just that Party Bags is what we do these days and so the expectation is there. Hell, I expect a party bag. I once said to Isla when she was nagging at the end of a party "Well, perhaps you'd better very politely ask H's mummy if there are any..." and she very politely tapped H's mummy on the leg and said "Where's my party bag please? And Hetty's please? Thank you?"

One little girl at Isla's got very confused when I said it was pudding time and said she wanted her cake to keep and put in her party bag. "How do you know there are going to be party bags?" I said. "Because it's a party!" she grinned. Impeccable logic, impossible to argue with.
And a bit mean on my part actually. Thank heavens I didn't make her cry, wicked woman.

So. We melted down crayons in a second-hand petits fours tray (ooh, fancy, no?) an idea taken from this lovely tutorial here. An activity which, by the way, is masses of fun. And check out how many we made! There were 28 kids and they had 5 each. You do the numbers, coz I can't, I had to get Isla to work it out. We made colouring cards using some birthday images from this life-saving website here. We shoved in a load of cheapie sweeties. And used sandwich packaging from OriginalStitch products, and bob's your uncle. Party Bags! And you know what - they loved 'em.

What eco-friendly non-plastic party bag ideas have you used? Come on, I need to start planning for the next daughter birthday!

Sew Hip Stacking Pockets

2010-04-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

Well, after a lot of frowning and tongue-outpoking (I believe this is the correct verb, no?), and laborious prototype making and checking and re-checking, I finally submitted my design to Sew Hip, for their May 2010 Issue, out now in the shops.

If you've never bought Sew Hip, and you're a sewster, then you'll love it. Go on, nip out and get it now while it's not raining. It soon will be raining and you know it, so there's nothing for it on Good Friday and Easter Weekend but to read a magazine, hm? Or subscribe, if you're in the US. Sit down, with a cup of tea and ideally a massive piece of chocolate cake and start reading. Actually, no, don't have the cake because you'll soon want to jump up and start making something from one of the Sew Hip patterns, and then you'll get cake on it. Actually, yes, do have the cake because to NOT have cake would just be ridiculous. Have the cake and sit on your hands. Eat the cake with your face. Just chow down. Put a straw in your tea.
I'm getting over-excited aren't I?

Anyway, so I jumped at the chance to work with Sew Hip because I think it has a fresh, upbeat take on what it is to sew today, and has captured the zeitgeist. Alice has just taken over as Editor, and she's racking up the blog posts, which is always nice, and they're fun twitterators too, so go and check them out if you haven't already come across Sew Hip and its online presence.

Starting with my design this issue, and a feature on OriginalStitch next issue (for which I should actually be finishing sending Alice the Ed some stuff instead of sitting here blogging - this is like being caught behind the bike sheds smoking when you're meant to be in class. Not that I ever did that because I would have been terrified to bunk off, and didn't even try smoking till I was 21. Twenty-one?! Twenty-one? What sort of a ridiculous age is that to start smoking? Seriously. Ones younger self, what bonkers decisions they took. Aaaaaand close parenthesis Catherine)

Umm...yes, so my Stacking Pockets design is in Sew Hip this issue, and they will be featuring us next issue too, for a more in-depth look at OriginalStitch HQ. And I promise I tidied up the office and studio for the photoshoot. Ish. If by tidying I mean shoving things in a cavernous drawer in another room to get them out the way, that is.
Allow it, right?!

Pattern 1: Let's Rock'n'Roll for the Pencil Roll!

2010-03-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

I think it is no great generalisation to say that all members of the species homo sapiens fall into one of Two Camps.

Camp 1: People who would laugh their heads off, if not give themselves a mirth induced hernia if you ever suggested they might like to try and sew something. Yes, you know some of these homo sapiens? I have lots of friends like this. Literally guffaw if I ask them if they sew. Snort, maybe even dribble a little with hilarity. And thank goodness for them, the lovely gorgeous lovelies, for they are my customers! Hello you all! Hello! Come and buy something? Yes? I'll see you in a mo, at the till.

Camp 2: People who see lovely fabricky things in the shops and say, oh isn't that lovely, oh I really like it, ooh I'd love to buy that, oh darn it and [insert expletive] I could make that myself! Oh for heaven's sake. Oooh, expletive and curse, I can't buy that, can I, seriously. I really could probably make it myself for far less.

Well and hello to you too! You are my loyal bloggy audience, and we are very excited to announce that we are going to be selling our 'recipes' as we like to call 'em, over at the OriginalStitch shop.

We take enormous pride in our recipes - they take up a huge amount of brain space in our bonces, and are developed with the utmost of pernicketty, pedantic, detail-seeking, maddeningly accurate obsessiveness, with the pure aim that they are easy peasy lemon squeezy to follow. Each one has been dreamed up, researched, and tested - for each pattern several prototypes are made until it is just right. Then they are painstakingly written up, and lovely little diagrams drawn, by me, with a great amount of concentration (you should see my drawing frown - it is quite awesome. Sometimes I even poke my tongue out).

So we ask for a little for them, because without wishing to sound like a shampoo advertisement, they are worth it! They're nice and reasonable - the Pencil Roll, as one of our more straightforward designs, is a mere £2.95, and it's downloadable, right there and then in your confirmation email.

We will also shortly be launching The OriginalStitch Cafe, at the moment an online social network for our Stitchers - but it will soon be open to anyone who wants to make one of our recipes. As well as all the information our Stitchers need to make our products, it will feature video tutorials for any tricky techniques in our recipes, as well as some light-hearted bits of advice on how to avoid revolting fabrics, or combine colours - stuff that might be helpful to any beginner sewing folk out there. In time, it will become a repository for lots of lovely sewing hints and tips. We would love to invite guest article writers in too - people who know what they're talking about! Once we've got some friendly faces in there we'll see what people would like.

So don't delay - hop on over to the shop and buy the Pencil Roll Pattern; it makes a fab gift for kids and friends' kids - I must have made about 12 last year!

We will be launching the recipe for each product in our collection, but need to go through the checking processes with all of them first - next up will be the Backpacks, which are just gorgeous to make, with some lovely neat techniques for fab finishing. We'll make sure we send a newsletter out to announce each launch - so if there is one in particular you're looking out for, just sign up for the newsletter at the shop and you'll be the first to find out.

Oh, and we're on Twitter too - oh it's such fun - come and follow me! Look there's my Twitter button just up there on the left. Lovely.

But never mind that - there is a small person bellowing at me from a toilet, I believe, so I dread to think what that might involve. At this point shall I stop sharing?!

Cool Post

2010-03-04T04:23:00.000-08:00

As I dash in from depositing various daughters at their distinguished institutes of learning, where they will merrily glue and paint and pour water into funnels and sing songs and compare lunches with their peers all day; I am busy concocting a huge To Do List in my head. It is not a neat Work Only To Do List, oh no, it's an everything I need to do that day To Do List.
It went something like this:

Google more eco directories for in-bound links
Chase up that catering number for our birthday party
Upload new Twitter image that doesn't chop off half my logo
Defrost mince for spaghetti bolognese, oh have we got some, yes, I'm sure we have
Oh lord, bring those milk bottles in
Upload Zero Tolerance Fabric pic to the stitchers' network
Ooh has that parcel arrived - brilliant - let me just put it in the milk bottle crate, take it all in at once
No pants left; put wash load on. Groan...boring...
Take photos for new blog post
Arrange to pick up freecycle stuff for new office move
Figure out chords for Bob The Builder for music session tomorrow
Optimise for search terms in metadata configurations
Gosh I'm hungry, did I eat breakfast? Eat breakfast
Oh crikey - forgot to upload those Musical Mayhem logos via the FTP link
Ask Mum whether I should hack back the buddleia now, and what about the Hibiscus I wonder

All this was buzzing around in my poor bonce at once, whilst my brain simultaneously attempted to complete its tasks of walking/carrying the milk crate/removing coat/trying to avoid overhanging coat excess in my hallway.

I managed to get a number of the things on the To Do List done, and then, sitting comfortably in my office with a cup of tea, decided to open the parcel.
Could I find the parcel? No I could not.
It should have been on my desk, but was not.
Well, where was it then, I hear you ask.
Well, where do you think? Hm? Have a little look at that list up there, and ask yourself which kitchen appliance it is most likely to have ended up in.

Yes, people. It was in my fridge.
And whilst I am feeling quite ridiculous about where it did end up, I am pretty pleased that it did not end up in place of the mince in the freezer, or with my pants in the washing machine.

3-2-1 and cue...!

2010-02-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

Well hoooooorah.
The shop is now officially open. Come on in - have a coffee! Oh sorry, no, the urn's not heated up yet - why not buy something while you wait? Lovely dolly sling? Double pen wallet? Cafe Set?
Tea-cosy you say? Patience people, patience! That's the next collection, but believe me, we're full steam ahead with that one. Our starting collection is the Kids Collection, and so our 6 gorgeous products are up there and available to purchase. Go ahead, don't be shy!

This theatre of operations has been a huge challenge, and although the paint ain't yet dry on the background scenery, we've got to take to the stage some time. As I said to a friend yesterday - well, the curtain has been raised but some of the performers are still running around in their pants with only one eyebrow painted on. I then got fully carried away with the whole performance analogy and was talking about cues and stagefright and lighting rigs. To be fair, kind of forgot what I was talking about.
Me? Tangent? Off on one? Surprise you?! No, didn't think so.

Anyway, I had a thread going on here, which was what a challenge setting up this business has been. Now let's not be over-romantic about this - sometimes a so-called 'challenge' ain't nothin but a big ole pain in the, to put it plainly, bum. And at other times, even though you are completely treading water and don't really know what you're doing, you relish the challenge with gusto. If one can relish with gusto; a bizarre phrase if ever I coined one. I could EAT some relish with gusto, because one side effect of all this 'ere thinkin' I've been having to do is that I'm ravenous all the time. But no matter - don't you be worrying about me turning into a little fatling, because I'm also freezing my wotsits off in this office. It ain't warm in here, and with this lovely weather we're having it ain't warm out there either.
So, to summarise this paragraph - thread, bums, relish, fatness, cold weather, ok?

A...n...y...w...a...y.....I was having an online chat with one of my many lovely bloggy friends about children. And blogs. And business. And sleep problems. (The children's that is, not ours. If for us parents such a thing as a night without the sound of little feet padding across the carpet, accompanied by a load of old cobblers about drinks or wees or monsters ever does occur, then we're talking about sleeping like logs, babies (how delightfully ironic), the dead...)
At the time of the online chat my bloggy friend was sat outside her children's rooms on guard duty in case her littlest one attempted to escape; and I had just had the pleasure of the Anti-Sleep Society President - you know her better as Hetty, pushing me quite far along my tether at bedtime.

And I made the point that no matter how tricky launching a website has been; no matter how much eye rolling my poor web developer must have been doing at my undoubtedly basic queries, no matter my head-banging over the complexities of income tax or insurance issues, or my total ignorance of html, not to mention disastrous product prototypes, sketchy product sketches, poor photography and broken sewing machines - none of it has come close to being as challenging or exasperating as the myriad challenges one's small children daily bamboozle one with. They are absolute Masters of the Bamboozle. Cutters to the Chase. Takers of No Prisoners.
So, I say this to you - if we can run a household and bring up children, then starting up a business is easy peasy lemon squeezy, no?

Hester, 3, yesterday said to me, when I asked her what she thought of my website - "I don't like fabric things Mummy. I think they're boring."
"Oh I see. Thanks for that then. What do you like?" I enquired.
"Shiny things."
Hm. Well, you and every other three narf year old, I'm guessing.

Isla, 4, yesterday said to me
"Mummy can you play this shopping game with me?"
"No, I just need to, um, hang on, oh no, I've lost my train of thought, I need to just copy and paste..."
"What are you copying Mummy? What is that? What does paste mean? Is that my dolly sling on there? Can I sit on your lap? What's that fabric thing there Mummy?"
"It's a...a...oh no, I've closed the tab, where is it..."
"What are you doing Mummy?"
"I'm trying to build a Ning network, Isla"
"Well." she said. "When you've finished building your Ning network can you ask Hetty to take the dice out of her mouth please?"

Living in a Material World

2010-02-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

My stash is becoming a problem.

I've got ginghams ganging up, plaids playing up. Florals in fights, spots in spats. In short, we are overrun by unruly fabrics.
This is, let's be clear, because I am singularly shoddy at tidying them up.
I realised this morning that it was getting out of control when there were lurid orange fabrics creeping up stealthily upon my poor guitar, which is quite new in the house and so not standing up for herself very much. Look, she's literally shrinking inside that case by the minute! She's terrified, look, as some strong and bold William Morris print encroaches upon her delicate neck area.
Ok, that's poetic license - she's not really shrinking - she is in fact in entirely the wrong size case, because she's what's called a parlour guitar, which is a nice dainty acoustic guitar. I fancied a smaller animal in the guitar family because I have pathetically small hands with a bonkersly tiny little finger. A big ole guitar is just a little too big. So I seem to have acquired for myself, via The Husb's money, a lovely little parlour guitar. I then stole The Husb's guitar case because it is nice and solid and sturdy, and put my little parlour guitar in there. He was really quite peeved, The Husb. This is most curious because I don't hear much guitar playing going on in HIS hands...she said, with a smug look....

Besides, I need a solid case to withstand the hoards of toddlers and babies and other small crawling creatures who descend weekly upon my guitar.

Hang on. Now then. One minute I'm banging on about boistrous fabrics, the next I'm banging on about boistrous bairns. Shall I explain myself? Shall I? I think perhaps I'd better.
With my good friend, Hetty's Boyf's Mother, I run a weekly music group jam-packed full of nursery rhymes and action songs and all sorts, where I twang-di-twang-di-boing and strum-di-strrruuum-ditty-strum very badly on the guitar, and Matilda the melodeon gets her kicks every week too. When feeling very myoozical I even bust out the fiddle and churn out a toon while the nippers wallop xylophones, whack drums and go nuts with maracas. It's totally bonkers, frankly, but ain't nothin' better than giving it some welly with old Humpty Dumpty, the Grand Old Duke of York, or Wind The Bobbin Up. And you should hear my She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain yee-haas. Oooh, I loves me that tune. In all seriosity, I'm straight out the Appalachians. We do stonking harmonies and everything, me and Hetty's Boyf's Mother.

A...n...y...w...a...y.....now then. As you might know, unless you're a new person here, in which case oh hello! Hi! How are you? Cup of tea? Help yourself, do.
Now where was I? As you might know, we are in the very, very final throes of finishing the website for the launch of OriginalStitch, which uses only recylced fabrics in its lovely, lovely, lovely gifts. (Have I mentioned how lovely they are, at all?) Which means that all my friends often thrust bits of fabric at me. Or whole bags of it.
They grab me in playgrounds, yell at me in a most unladylike manner across preschool carparks, like this "Ooh, hang on, don't go, wait a mo, where is it - got a bag of - oomph, there you go - material, stuff and things for you - want it?" and I'm all "Oooooooooooh!" and I invariably dribble slightly. Glee is the word. Glee.
Doesn't a bag of fabric make you feel gleeful?!
And one such lovely bag of fabrics was thrust at me through the serving hatch when we were doing the teas and coffees after Musical Mayhem. When I got home I got Matilda out of the car, replete with donated fabrics precariously piled atop her.
Et voila. A curious patchwork of fabric and music mingled together in a blog post.
And here is Matilda, all covered in fabric, and lookee here - just check out that case! That is FOR REAL you people! That's a real melodeon case! My teacher gave it to me for free, because he said it was a little too feminine for his tastes and couldn't wait to get rid of it. Giz it here then, I said, coz I'm loving that. It matches my decor and everything.

However, the mauling given to the guitar by those fabrics there was entirely my fault. I'd just been giving it some to a tune called Mairi's Wedding when my folks were here, and then my sister was all, ooh, I've got that bag of fabric, who wants some? So the poor old parlour girl was thrown aside and soon found herself festooned in oranges, poor lass. Although, I have to say, looking closely, and bearing in mind I have very few oranges in my stash - I wonder if the parlour girl asked them over because they rather nicely match her lovely brown wooden body.

And those of you who were none the wiser about what the devil in a boiled egg a melodeon is, well now you know. Absolute corker isn't she?

Graffitea

2010-01-25T04:12:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday, and we, being English, have just had Afternoon Tea. In our house we generally fall into one of two camps - you either get really, really dressed up, as did Isla, or you take tea in your vests and tights as did Hetty. You must of course remember to bring your sunglasses and to sit nicely, even The Husb who actually stole MY chair. Hmph. During the taking of afternoon tea, we like to watch absolute drivel on television, of the reality show type, or those hilarious programmes with people falling off things and into things. On this particular occasion, Hetty had been busting some moves in response to some sort of Dance To Win programme or something, hence her garb. Isla de-robed herself and threw some shapes on the dancefloor later, including handstands on the sofa - but during tea she was demure and fully resplendent in her tiara.

After my very daft previous post on tea, I felt it incumbent upon me to furnish our Lolly over at LollyChops.com with some tea leaves. And then of course I couldn't just send it in an old plastic bag now could I?
Ah, do you see....
There is the downside to all this crafty bloggy business. If we were in the motor mechanics blogging world I'm pretty sure we'd just send each other copper sprockett nuts or alternating truckle hinges in a mucky old rag. With a stamp on; stuck on with chewing gum maybe, or axle grease. But in a world where even our envelopes take on a degree of crafty flair, and we can't resist the urge to prettify even such prosaic processes as parcelling something up, we suddenly find our itchy little fingers are wriggling for ribbons or tinkering about in boxes for sequins or punches or pinking shears and we're up there in the workroom a-rummaging in our stash like a deranged squirrel.

I'm going to interrupt myself here a little, to show you some photos of how nice my workroom can look. You know, when it's tidy. That rare state of being it sometimes finds itself in...

See how neat?

Ooh look, and things in labelled boxes, where they're meant to be, yes?

And that is just gorgeous. Folded, ironed for heaven's sake even, and just soooo pretty. Who doesn't just love a pile of fabrics?

But this is me, remember, so don't get too cosy in your seat, because I will show you the horror of my workroom after my creative energies have been unleashed in it a little later. It's not nice. At all.

Anyway, I wanted to make a bag to put Lolly's tea in. At first, I was just going to run up a quick rectangle envelopey thing, you know, one piece of fabric, a little ribbon to tie it in a bow. But then a few more bits of fabric sidled up to me and flirted till I relented and included them, and then a naughty bit of teal coloured fabric threw itself off the shelf and elbowed its way into the sewing machine, and before long the simple envelopey thing turned itself into a proper, strippy patchwork, lined bag with two casings for the straps. I'm telling you, there was very nearly a pocket in it and everything.

But I stood and put my hands on my hips and waggled my finger and commanded a bit of authority in my own workroom. I fiercely resisted the pocket. It sulked for a while and fidgeted up on the shelf with a moody look in its knap, but I can out-stubborn anything.
Anyway. Now when it comes to handles, I am getting a bit fed up with the time-consuming method of putting two long thin straps right-sides-together and then turning them inside out, using a safety pin, or even a rouleau loop turner. Frankly, it's too much of a faff. And I'd made such small casings for the straps that I knew they were not going to slide easily through unless I used a silky sort of fabric. And silky fabrics are the absolute curse-mongering devils to sew. So, I went for my favourite type of handle-making technique and plaited scrappy bits of fabric.
But wait a moment....I promised Lolly I'd post a picture of just how mad the fabric was before its plaiting makeover.
...and just check it out! Oh it's just bonkers. Actually, it looks quite nice as a photo but in real life it bellows in your face orangely and gives you quite a shock. And it feels absolutely revolting - it is from a fabulous bag of furnishing remnants I got from freecycle. I can't imagine what it would be used for because it has that feel to it which makes you recoil - you feel as if you've had a brush with the 1970's, in all its man-made velour-covered polyester triple weave static electric glory.
Yeeuch.
But when cut in to strips (during which process it wriggled and jiggled under the rotary blade like it was actually flinching. I felt like a butcher trying to chop off a live animal's tail or something - it was all getting a bit surreal in there)...and plaited it looked super duper and didn't feel half so, um, eeuuoo, I believe is the word.
I can't vouch for its fire retardancy, mind.
Those puppies could go up in flames at the mere word 'kindling' for all I know. Still, that's a nice piece of fabric upcycling for you, from scrap to strap...

But brace yourselves. The unleashing of creative juices when supposedly 'whipping up' something out of fabric results in workroom armageddon.

Come on, you know what I'm saying.

I am so focussed on the task at hand that the nice tidy baskets might as well be a pure figment of my imagination. Forget their fancy labels giving me clearly allocated homes for every conceivable size or potential use of fabric you can think of.
No, I lob bits of fabric everywhere. I rummage. I scramble. I throw things willy-nilly on the floor. I leave scissors, pins, rotary blades, sewing gauges where I can't find them. If the pin-cushion is 1 yard too far away from my hands I use whatever IS to hand. Which in this case was an old nappy I'd been experimenting with for wadding. Yes, I'm not kidding. An old terry towelling nappy from our happy nappy days.

At one point I needed to scribble down some dimensions before I forgot them. Did I have a piece of paper and pen within 1 yard of me? Of course not. It was 2 yards away. So where did I write 'em? Yes, that's right. On my sewing machine.
Seriously - what a disgrace.

But on the plus side, the graffiti on the sewing machine does at least pale into insignificance when you take in the whole vista of my workroom....
So, in the style of some sort of therapy workshop - let's divide you into two groups shall we? Those who are nodding vigorously and saying oh yes, I'm just the same, aren't we just so creative....

For you, here is the dreamy messy workroom....ahh, lovely....the colours, the creativity...

And for those of you who quite rightly think this is a national disgrace and I need a jolly good ticking-off, here is the gritty crime-scene photo.

I grudgingly acknowledge this more honestly captures the heinous abuse of my poor workroom.

And hands up who thinks I have since tidied it?!

Lolly Put the Kettle On!

2010-01-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

I am departing slightly from the main road here today, or rather going off-piste, to use a meteorologically inspired metaphor, and am going to do a blog post all about tea.
I do this for two reasons - one, to show you a lovely Christmas present I received from my sister, who crocheted me a mug-warmer! A mug-warmer! Isn't that just fantastic?
And two as a Special Service Announcement for our American friends, inspired by a very daft conversation I have been having with LollyChops, that fabulous blogger from big old Texas, which I suspect is a good deal warmer than here...

Her latest blog post, which has a title of which she can be rightly proud - The Mad Tatter's Teabag Template (her sister is learning tatting, which in very basic terms is a form of lace-making using knots and loops; the post is all about teabag holders; Lolly's a bit mad etc and well I mean, it's all come together in a perfect headline hasn't it? It's the stuff tabloids dream of, no?)...is all about tea. In my comment at the end of her blog I got rather over-excited, because I think it's fair to say we do like a drop of tea in this country. There's no-one can say we ain't fond of a cuppa.

And therein began a dotty email thread all about making tea, and the intricacies involved. In which Lolly said "I have always heard about the English and their tea! I would love to try it so I can see if it's any different from how we make it (I think we might boil it or something too long...)"

So, here it is - the definitive guide to making tea, as per MY method of making tea, which does not, you shoddy good-for-nothing teabaggy slatterns, you - involve putting a teabag in a cup. Get a teapot people, get a teapot. You know who you are.

How to make a Luvverly Cup of Tea

1. Find a beautiful teapot. Swish some nice hot water into it to warm the pot.
2. Boil your kettle - now I interrupt myself here to ask a question....do you have kettles, you Americans?? You know, a thing you plug in to an electricity socket to boil water in? Or one you put on the hob/cooker/stove? One of these....

I'm not being rude, I promise, it's just that I remember when I lived in France there was not a one to be had. They were all about their coffee, and used other machiney things for that, percolators or whatever. Failing that, they just boiled water in a pan. So I boiled water in a pan for a year, and when I came back to England I was all "Ben, non! Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que ca, hein? C'est super ca, non?" - which translates as "...like oh my God! What's that thing? A kettle! Oh my god, what a great idea!"
Ok, so, getting back to the point then. If you have no kettle, simply fill a pan-type vessel with um, say, 4 cups of freshly drawn water Although I'm not totally up on what a cup is, and equally I'm hopeless at pints, litres, fluid ounces etc. Thank heavens I'm not a recipe writer, hm? and using heat of some description from a cooking type appliance, begin to boil the water.

3. While the water is heating up, place 2 teaspoonfuls of English Breakfast Tea leaves (if you're posh, but I won't pretend many of us actually do use tea leaves, even me - so teabags are allowed, because I say so, so we're talking 1 bag per person) and one teaspoonful for the pot. (We have an expression 'one per person and one for the pot', since presumably the pot is thirsty too. This makes the kind of cuppa my grandad would have said is 'strong enough to get itself out the pot', ie, "Ahh lovely. Can't stand tea that's not strong enough to get itself out the pot". In this house, my 'one for the pot' is a cheeky little Earl Grey teabag. Oh yes - I'm so fancy aren't I?)
3. Wait until the water is BOILING - actually BOILING; not just about to boil, or boiled, but BOILING, BOILING I say - and then pour in to your teapot, and put the lid on.
4. Make a lovely tea-cosy, (or perhaps try and find one you made earlier, or your tea will be what we call 'stewed', in other words mighty strong and probably cold...) and place over your teapot to keep your tea hot, as demonstrated here.

4. Allow your tea to stand for a few minutes, and then with a teaspoon, stir 3 times round.
5. Find a dainty teacup, pour in a little milk - (ok, I'm prepared for the unleashing of a barage of disgusted tea-drinkers saying you should pour your tea in first and add the milk after, and I agree that in The Ritz and other lovely hotels you would do that, lest the waiter turn up his or her nose at you, you common little oik. But look here; I think we have let it lie with the teabags; let's all admit we pour the milk in first, shall we, hm? - and gently pour in your tea trying not to mutter and swear too much at the drips which will inevitably come off the spout on to your worksurface. Get a cloth, and learn to live with it; that's what the British Stiff Upper Lip is for.
6. Add a spoonful of sugar if you wish, or 2 if you are very bad, and drink, sipping delicately.
7. Alternatively, use a dirty great mug so you get a big washdown of tea to keep you going, which is what most of us do.
8. Go "Ahh! Now that's a nice cup of tea..."

And there you have it, the definitive guide to making tea. Many of us Brits would have to admit to drinking far too much of it, especially in these wintry climes, which have us racing headfirst to the kettle every hour, wishing we also had crumpets, teacakes, or scones....

But they really are beyond my culinary expertise to explain, so I leave you instead with a nice picture of the kind of Afternoon Tea you would have a right to expect at a London hotel, or indeed any self-respecting top hotel the world over. When I worked in media, and was bored of expensive boozy lunches, I started instead taking clients out to Afternoon Tea, which was cheaper, but felt like such a treat. Nothing quite like seeing a grown man who works in the computer industry picking up dainty sugar lumps with tongs.

And it is easily one of my all time favourite ways to spend an afternoon. Ah, you lapsang suchong, you ceylon, you Russian Caravan tea...ah you little tiny cucumber sandwiches, oh the cakes....

Light Work

2010-01-07T00:14:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to you all! Happy Snow Year it is here, as in the rest of England, where we are all enjoying wondering whether our Las Vegas bound Husbs might be enjoying a night spent at Gatwick airport tonight. On their own heads be it, we are all thinking, no?!
I have half a mind to be out there in this bright snowy light taking photos of things for the OriginalStitch website, which needs images for the products. I have discovered that having previously thought my photography was quite good, it is in fact, how can I put it....
Um, not.
Not good. I grabbed some sunshine to take pictures a while back, with young Hetty in tow, and now understand what a tricky devil light is. There was too much of it, or too little, or it was making shadows. Or not making shadows. Or being in the wrong place entirely, the feckless little pixie of a substance.
What's that you say? That's what photographers are for?! Ah....! Thanks for shedding light on that.

So I have engaged a photographer to do a product shoot for us, which we will also video, since it has children in it, and they are usually dreadful at doing as they are told, and should thus provide some fun footage for a video on the website.
Talking of children; as with all us folks here in Old Blighty, I have the children off school today because of the snow. Fancy making a mini tea set from salt dough? Today salt-dough, tomorrow website applications and digital imaging work if I get my way - make them pay theirs. They are 3 and 4, and I have come to realise that these youngsters know about technology innately, unlike us post-thirtyers, who are a bit stuck in the margins of Word documents. So I'm assuming Isla and Hetty will shortly be in a position to undertake the website maintenance, and help me put nifty little gadgets and widgets and apps on this blog. Which would leave me free to go and do some sorely desired sewing. Now, I do love Christmas, and this year we descended, Volvo-bound, upon hoards of relatives and literally paid not a sausage in room and board for nearly two weeks. It was quite fabulous - there is nothing quite like being able to say "Can I give you a hand?" and being given a job without having to make decisions. Lovely.
Yes, said my hosts - just stir this a minute will you. Yes, here - slit these and stuff cream cheese in. Er, yes - you slice, I'll butter. Yes, wrap smoked salmon round these. Yes, make napkin fans. Slice cucumber. Set the table. Mix this. Stir. Mix. Stir.
Lovely.
However, I have not sewn for weeks and weeks and weeks, never mind our desperation to get cracking on the OriginalStitch Homewares Collection. Desperate, I am. I managed to grab a strip of pretty cotton and stitch it onto a handtowel, just to get a bit of a sewing fix. I can at least look at it when I'm on the loo and feel I've done something. And I managed to throw together some appliqued baby wipes from fleece and old terry towelling nappies for a friend with a little baby girl, her third of that variety, and practically brand new; although our attempt to reach them was entirely scuppered by a bonkers M25 motorway, and so we simply drove around our picturesque home county of Buckinghamshire for 2 hours, blindly following road diversion signs round labyrinthine roadwork avoidance routes and eating our packed lunches before arriving back home. Departure point - home. Destination - home. Hm. Not such a successful journey.
But not as convoluted perhaps as The Husb who battles valiantly 'cross counties and 'twixt snow-bound highways to reach us....yes, his flight to Las Vegas has ceased to exist and they've sent him home.
"I'll be home in 2 hours I reckon" he said. Hm. Well.
I'll keep you posted shall I?!
I will leave you with a final look back at Christmas, before we launch headfirst into a cold and frugal January. This is Hetty's take on the nativity, and we believe it to be a dress rehearsal for the real thing. I had heard her chattering away while I devoured my latest issue of Sew Hip, and when I looked, here they were, the players in a tableau. The shepherd on the right is saying "Are you sure we're meant to have them on our heads? This one's coming off any minute, I'm telling you." and the Wise Man on the right is saying "What the...? Do I need to put an animal on my head? Well, this is not expected. Melchior my man, is that chap in the manger giving birth as well?" and Mary's saying "No, no, it's all in hand. Joseph's got baby Jesus over there on the blue dresser next to the Christmas tree. They went to talk to the snowman tree decoration and Jesus wanted to see the fairy at the top of the tree."