The mounting is finished and my tulip is finally finished.
I did the first of my pieces with the RSN on an intensive course last summer, we had 8 days tuition over two weeks to design, complete and mount the embroidery. This, my second piece was started in October and I have, just a few moments ago, cut the last thread.. I just have the self assessment form to complete now! Obviously I think it’s wonderful and worth full marks across the board – well apart from the mounting maybe..

The piece will be marked on cleanliness, stitch technique, edges of the embroidery, shading and mounting..

I know I’ll lose marks on the mounting, there’s a bit of puckering which no amount of stretching or lacing the back will remove, other than that I have enjoyed working this piece and am fairly pleased with the finished product!

After what seems like weeks of rain, we’re enjoying a bit of sunny weather in the UK – or at least in Surrey

So we packed up a picnic, grabbed the dog and went off on an adventure. We saw a wild deer racing away from another dog ( thankfully ours was still on the lead at that point), sat on a bench watching runners in a race go past – hope they were encouraged by our 3 person cheering squad – we felt a bit guilty that we were having a snack as they’d just run up a big hill.. And enjoyed our picnic..

Happy New Year! What will 2012 have in store for you?

We sold our house just before Christmas and so will be moving some point soon! The photo above is the view from our current front door this morning. The view from the new house will be of the train station – lucky we have a little boy who loves trains! We’ll have a bit more space and so I’ll actually have a sewing room! It’s just a small box room, but I have big plans for it! fingers and toes are crossed that everything goes through smoothly!

Are you the kind of person who makes Resolutions at this time of year? I’m not, January is bleak enough as it is without giving up chocolate! I’m sure this time of year I always promise faithfully to blog at least weekly and keep up with Twitter, and maybe this time I will, but with a house move near in the future I’m not making any promises!

I’m hoping 2012 will be a good year, I hope to have an online store up and running, I hope to sort out Sewing blogs and I hope to become and organised, tidy and skinny person – I hope some of those things come true, but it might take more than hard work to make me organised and tidy

Happy New Year! I hope some of your wishes come true this year!

Laura Lovegrove is leaving behind her seamless life in London. Architect husband Adi has been relocated to rural Norfolk, a far cry from ultra-urban Ealing. Though Laura knew village life would be different, she didn’t foresee a pokey cottage, nosey neighbours, errant poodles, and even an ex turning up. Chris had been her big love at art college and seeing him again is utterly confusing. Is she really so different from the impulsive student who once trawled charity shops for vintage treasures? When a fire all but destroys Laura’s collection of vintage clothes, she’s heartbroken. And seriously lacking in outfits. But, salvaging what she can, Laura makes do and mends – sewing purses, bags, even dog leads (which should solve the poodle problem). Soon, she’s inundated with orders. But Adi is becoming more and more distant; it’s like there’s something he’s not telling her. Can Laura make a stitch in time and pull her family back together again?

When I was asked if I’d like to receive an advance copy of Amanda Addison’s debut novel, write a review, interview the author and give away a couple of copies of the book it didn’t take me long to say yes! But then I am so the target audience for this book – it was described to me as a cross between Slummy Mummy and Kirstie’s Homemade Home and it lives up to that.

Artist Laura struggles to adapt to life in the country, juggling work, family, a new found love of craft and trying to get reception for her phone! Her work life combines designing fabric prints in their conservatory with teaching in a college – with Ofsted pending & a great bunch of characters in the class. I did particularly enjoy the increasing irritation of Laura’s husband as her sewing takes over their home, some rather familiar conversations to me there!

Laura joins a sewing group which reminded me of the Guild I was in when we lived in Streatham, I too was the youngest and least experienced and, like Laura found it a great place to learn.

The textures and designs described are so vivid, I was not surprised to learn that the author was trained at Chelsea School of Art. Art and craft run through this book from start to finish and add a lovely extra dimension to the novel, I feel that I really learnt something from the book. It’s chocked full of facts about the history of textiles and vintage fashion remnants.

At the start of each chapter is a description of an embroidery stitch, I do plan to go back through and try out some of the ones I hadn’t heard of before and at the end of the book are patterns for a lavender bags and little chicks, which look rather sweet!

Laura’s Handmade Life is available to buy, but two lucky readers can win copies by commenting on this blog post.

All you have to do is to let me know what inspires you to pick up the needles and you’ll be in with a chance of receiving a copy of this fantastic read.

Post a comment on this post and I’ll close the competition at midnight next Thursday – 30th June- and will draw 2 winners at random!

UPDATE: I just confirmed with the publisher and the competition is now open Worldwide, not just to the UK.

So I finished my quilt and then first question people asked was what are you going to do next.
I figured I should finish off a few things, before I started something new.

I started this piece at a course at the Royal School of Needlework in November 2008 and it has been sat in my work box ever since.

Hopefully I remembered enough to finish it off ok! The last little bit was on the big leaf. The toughest part I find for this technique is to keep the direction of the stitches right, especially round curves. Obviously that’s also one of the most important parts of the technique!

I will be going back to the RSN in a couple of weeks to do my first module of their Certificate in Needlework. I’ll be doing a 2 week course in Jacobean Crewelwork, for which I’m meant to be working on the design at the moment – hence a long over due blog post!

I topped off a lovely week with my Mum by going to the [Patchwork & Quilting Show at Hever Castle](http://www.hha.org.uk/DB/news/patchwork-and-quilting-exhibition-at-hever-castle.html). Once again I found myself in awe of the talent out there, there was some really amazing work on show!

Inspired by the work I vowed to take out my chicken quilt and do more work on that. I also signed up for a block of the month quilt with [Antique Angel](http://www.antiqueangel.co.uk/cart/product-view.php?CA=Block%20of%20the%20Month%20Quilts&SES=0f062255a6fd0ad078a08864b9e06aa9) – because, well you know I’m not soo busy doing anything else at the moment, I post more on this when my first pack comes through!

Here are a very small selection of photos, taken on my iphone so not great quality and I had no room/ability to zoom out so they’re mainly portions of some of the very large quilts on show -

The first quilts we saw were entered into the Hever Challenge on the theme ‘My Favourite Artist’. Next to a quilt inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci was this one titled ‘Bachelor Boy’ by Jan Williams, my Mum is a huge Cliff fan so it was a firm favourite!

There were some great children’s quilts exhibited..

I’ve been planning on doing an advent calender for a few years now – and love this quilted one, luckily I resisted buying a second kit!

This really appeals to my loves of science and art, plus the frogs are just really cute

I’ve also had a long term love of Japanese art, the image above is a bit blurry but was inspired by a lacquered screen and I loved the work in the one below.

I could have taken so many more photos,