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..

There are a number of work stations set up around the outside of the room, with adjustable trellis’ designed to hold your embroidery at the perfect height and angle..

So the challenge is to recreate these conditions at home..

My frame gets moved around all over the place!

As I’ve mentioned I like to sit in our dining room, I have the radio and, although the light is slightly better in the living room I have a daylight lamp which helps!

Here you can see my current piece held up by the table at the top and two storage baskets at the side each on a chair, which seem to be a good height for me! You can see the embroidery is surrounded with tissue paper to keep the fabric and already done bits as clean as possible while I’m working. I also use the tissue paper bits to hold my threads and the photo/ drawings I’m working from.

As you can’t see the actual embroidery so well on that last photo, here’s a close up..

Enjoy. X

Here’s my frame all wrapped up, keeping all dust and ladybirds (we have tonnes this year) from harming my work..

and here is my piece so far:

hopefully I only have a couple of days left tuition on the embroidery and then you need a full day for mounting, a tough process I need to prepare my fingers for! Last time I could barely type after we’d mounted!

So that’s Crewel work down, silk shading nearing the end I still have gold work and a choice of canvas stitches or blackwork to go.

I think we’re all settling in to our new home and routine – D especially is enjoying a whole extra hour in the day as his commute is shorter both in train time and walk to the station (less than a minute to the platform from our door. Little Ted can wave to Daddy on the platform and watch his train leave on a morning.. And we watch for his train arriving on an evening – if he ever misses that train I think we might be in trouble!

We’re also enjoying more space to run round in (sometimes literally!).

I was a bit worried that we might not use the dining room- but Edward eats all of his meals in here and we eat with him on a weekend so we have nice family time in here – also the music is set up in the hatch between the kitchen and dining room so its a good place for me to sit on a morning to work in.. (photo above taken through the hatch..)

We’ve got the house into a state we can live in so now we have to motivate ourselves to get the last bits unpacked and start doing all the little jobs that are necessary but could drag on for the next 6 months.. For example we could never invite Everywhereist to stay as not only do we have a shower screen, but it’s a foldable one, stuck in the folded position – we have to be very careful not to soak the bath mat! ( the Everywhereist link is well worth a read )

if you didn’t guess already I just discovered Instagram, so even the dullest photos look a little bit cool! – it also can upload direct to Flickr, making blogging from the iPad a little bit easier for me..

I’ve been busy sorting through and tidying things ready for the packers, so bizarrely I’ve rearranged the kitchen cupboards and we have switched around the living room furniture with just days in the house.. This morning I’ve packed us an over night bag and put aside some cleaning stuff. I think the next thing to do is try to make sure things are in the right room – I know that Little Ted’s toys will be packed into boxes from every room!

So now I regret my 2 weeks radio silence on the blog as we’ll be without TV, telephone and more importantly broadband for 2 weeks at the new place! Hard enough for me to cope without broadband, but we’ll have to explain to Little Ted why he can’t watch the advert for Stick Man on YouTube again.

On a craft front, I have finally finished my MillaMia cushion – in red (one of the few packed things so no photo yet) just in time to move to a house with orange living room curtains – I’m hoping I can still use it in there!

I’ve also started a new quilt using a jelly roll I’ve had in my stash for a while..

Until now I have just taken it out to look at now and then, I haven’t had a plan for the quilt, I’ve just been playing with the fabric. First I unrolled it – with a bit of help from a friend.

Then I sewed strips together into fours and played with some layouts.

For some reSon I decided that triangles were the way to go..

I’ve sewn up a block, but the triangles are hard to line up. I’m going to unpick the whole thing and use some chunky sashings to hide behind.. This is a real learning curve, but I’m loving the challenge.

See you in a few weeks when we’re in a new home..

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!

I’ve just returned from a brisk and frosty dog walk. This is the lovely park at the end of our road, Brewster and I don’t always make it that far as it’s a long road and he’s still pretty young (and there is a park closer to us, it’s just not as nice). The photo above doesn’t show just how frosty it was, so here’s a good excuse to post a cute photo of a puppy

I think this is my favourite type of weather ( I may say that on every change of the season!), it’s sunny but icy cold here – I know the North has snow, but they can keep it for now – I have plans and I’m not ready for snow this year! This morning I impressed myself by driving the car for the first time evert – now that may make me sound a bit silly, but I’ve only been driving regularly for 18 months (measured by the age of Little Ted minus the 6 weeks to recover from c-section..) and last winter I stayed in or walked once it got icy!

On Friday Duncan and I had a rare date, we booked a baby sitter (about a month ago) and were planning on going to the cinema. When it came to it we couldn’t decide on a film, so I dragged D for mulled wine, mince pies and 10% off at my local yarn store, The Knit Club (before we went on to dinner). We put the discount to good use and bought the knitted bauble and little bird in the photo above ( the owl was a gift from Geraldine), I will also be surprised by sock yarn and a set of knit-pro needles on Christmas morning…. if he’s lucky and I can figure out the sock thing I might knit him a pair for his wellies when walking the dog!

I finished Little Ted’s advent calendar just in time.. I decided to make it a week and a half ago, I always loved having a chocolate advent calendar growing up and as our little chap is both dairy and soya intolerant, it’s difficult to find anything he can have. I have actually got him a lovely paper calendar which is a nativity play – ill photograph it when we have more pieces in place..
So I am once again over compensating for the dairy thing by giving Little Ted extra treats

It’s made up of heart and stocking shaped pockets cut from red and white felt blankets from Ikea.
On one side is the number and the back is decorated with embroidery and felt hearts.. Each is different. The pockets are then pegged onto a ribbon with little pegs (it’s actually a kit to hang christmas cards – £1.99 from a local craft shop).

I worked on this for 4 days, with more time I would have put more planning into it, especially the embroidery – I did just make it up as I went. I also might have used templates and appliqué for the numbers, but given the tight deadline I’m fairly pleased!

And so we come to day 1, tonight we’ll be getting out the Christmas books. I love The Night Before Christmas and Raymond Briggs’ books and am looking forward to sharing them at bed time.

So what will I do with the rest of my day, I’ll write this post, check over twitter – add a couple more blogs to Sewing blogs, then set to work on some sewing – I’m making an advent calendar for Ted, I’ve cut out the pieces for bags..

And am now decorating them.. The idea is that I will put in an activity for each day in advent.. So any ideas would be good – so far i have:

buy Christmas tree,
decorate tree,
go to toddler group party,
go to nativity at church,
go look at lights in london,
visit Santa,
put on christmas music and dance round living room,
get out Christmas books
make: decoration for tree,
card,
calendar,
mince pies ..

I’m sure a few more Christmas parties and visits will crop up.. But I’m still in need of a few more ideas – I have a few for older kids, but Ted’s only 19 months!

I’m also finishing the back of the MillaMia Elk cushion. I bought the kit a while ago and am quite proud of my first attempt at knitting with 2 colours.. Photo to follow when I’ve figured out blocking!

Between Little Ted being I’ll, me catching it and a trip to Yorkshire my little adventure has hit the back burner…

Today Ted is in nursery, pup has been walked, laundry is on and I’ve got time to sit down with a coffee and actually think!

My time until 3:45 is my own, before we were brought down with sickness Duncan started me off revamping sewing-blogs.com, so I have more work to do on that and for my birthday recently I got some amazon vouchers.. I went a bit mad, but have some new books to flick through for inspiration/ and a stack of novels to attack..

I just had all sorts of problems uploading those photos – I’m using WordPress on an iPad.. In the end I have resurrected my Flickr account and am sharing my photos from there.. Probably not a bad thing, I’m sure using Flickr is a good way of attracting traffic…

I love autumn, especially in Surrey, it’s called leafy for a reason! – the onset of cooler weather, stews, falling leaves – kicking up leaves ( i know I’m 5!), getting out warmer clothes – especially boots! I wear a lot more skirts in the autumn and winter than in the summer!

One of the other great things is that start of the year feeling, I always get it more in September than January – probably because I stayed in academia for so long (from age 5 to 25). So what better time of year to be starting a new venture!

So far we have moved the hosting on my blog, so my website you may notice is a bit tidier. All the old pages have now gone and the about page which was 5 years out of date ( though readers may have been fooled into thinking I was still 27!). We have suffered a bit of down time while the blog switched and the links in older posts need updating on the new system, but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome!

I’ve done some reading and planning for the business side of things – I found some good starting points on UK tax for small crafters selling online. I need to go through them in more detail, but also need to have things to sell first!

I’m going to be using Trello as my on line to do organiser. I’ve set up a board for blog post ideas – and one for home which I can add things to D’s to do list

I’ve got myself setup with Google apps for suzical.co.uk (which means my suzical email is now managed by gmail and i can have multiple accounts) and D is bugging me to set myself up with an online password manager (apparently the same password for everything is bad, who knew #eek).

All I need to do now is to get stitching

So I’m taking the plunge. I’ve blogged about it, I’ve commented on other people’s blogs wishing I was brave enough and I’ve dreamt about it for several years now. Suzical will start trading on the 10th October 2011.

Actually I won’t be trading anything that day, but I will start making my plans then.. I leave my current job on the 6th.

This is partly a quality of life move, I’ll be shortening Little Ted’s hours at nursery, I’ll get to see him on a morning and hopefully he’ll be less tired. But mainly it’s my chance to make some changes to our lives, try to follow my passion & see where this takes me..

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly recieved! I need to decide whether I’d benefit most from using folksy/ etsy or setting up my own online store or all three.. And also what I should be doing – Embroidery is obviously my main passion, but I’d love to do more quilting.. What do you think people will buy? Cushions, bags, door stops, art work??

So watch this space as I go into business! Eek!

For each subject you get 8 teaching days. I’m working at Hampton Court, but there are sites around the UK, San Fransisco and I think Japan – check out their website for a better list..

I did the Jacobean course as a 2 week intensive block and boy was it intensive! We were taught Monday to Thursday for 2 weeks and had the Friday and weekend in the middle for homework. Not realising how tough it would be when I booked it I worked the Fridays, which was fine but I was exhausted! I’m not sure if being local was an advantage or not, I had my family around me to keep me going and bring me food, but also to distract me..
I think I added it up to 60 + hours of work on the piece.

I’m writing this on the train to the first day of my second technique, silk shading.. I have tonnes of ideas and some lovely silk a colleague gave me a few years ago..

Just pulling in to clapham junction, need to change trains..

We’ve been growing some veg out in the wilderness that is our garden. A combination of sun and loads of rain have been brilliant for growing the broccoli, unfortunately the grass and weeds have exploded as well!!

A few nights ago I headed up the garden and brought back a pan full of peas, broad beans, a head of broccoli and some fresh herbs. Adding in some bacon & a little spicy chorizo I made up a gorgeous risotto. My cooking is not usually blogable, but I’m particularly proud of this one. I like to think Jamie Oliver would be proud as well, Little Ted had it for his lunch the next day!

I’m getting ready for a couple of weeks of embroidery at the Royal School of Needlework. I’ll be doing a module in Jacobean crewel work, the first of four courses that make up the RSN’s certificate in embroidery. The RSN is based at Hampton Court Palace, which is such a lovely environment to work in!

I’ve put together a design to take with me, but the course instructions advise to be open with the design and to talk it through with the course instructor and make use of their experience, so I’m sure it’ll change a fair amount.

I’m not very good at drawing so have used one of Little Ted’s picture books for the peacock, I used French curves to draw the curved lines – the fun part has been deciding which stitches to use where. I’ll take a hoop and some calico with me so that i can try out a few things before incorporating them into the design. I’m rather exciting, though fairly nervous – When I’ve been on courses before I’ve worked designs provided by the instructor! I’ll let you known how I get on!

Tell us a bit about your background, I understand you illustrated books before you wrote.

After leaving school I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue art or modern languages. So I decided to try out art school and absolutely loved it. I did a degree in illustration at Chelsea School of Art. It was a very broad ranging degree and I explored many textile techniques for illustration.

I carried on with my German and it was very useful when researching the character of Hannelore.

I then worked in a variety of art and design jobs, from surface pattern design for children’s and women’s fashion, to stage set design and illustration. The illustration work led me to developing my own ideas for texts.

Since having children I attended a hand embroidery class and began to incorporate hand stitching into my mixed media collages.

In 2005 I was awarded a bursary to develop a children’s picture book, using a sail maker as my inspiration. This led to the creation of To Market…To Market, a short story about the Norfolk wherrymen.

I have also worked p/t as an art and creative writing lecturer for quite a few years.

In the novel Laura discovers craft having been as artist for many years, how did happen for you?

Like many of my art school contemporaries and textile teaching colleagues we learnt a lot about ‘process’, developing ideas and thinking skills but missed out on the rigour of craft skills, such as hand embroidery. In fact a straw poll of my art and textile department colleagues (all graduates) reveals that no-one knows the A-Z of hand embroidery stitches. We tend to use stitching more as mark making.

I attended a hand embroidery class, originally with the sole intention of using different stitches within illustration work. At that time I was the youngest student in the class, the eldest being 92! It was good that the other students all knew what they were doing as at first I needed a lot of help to realise my ideas. This also led to producing pieces of artwork for exhibition which included my own dyed and printed fabrics embellished with stitching.

There are a lot of very vivid descriptions of textile designs and crafts are these based on items you have designed yourself?

Definitely! Although some pieces are purely imaginary but I feel confident that I could make them up. And some pieces have come been inspired by my students.

Yurts feature a lot in the novel; do you have dedicated work space? Do you use the same space for writing as you do for your art?

Unfortunately I don’t have a yurt as my studio. However, I became very interested in them after attending a wedding in the country’s largest yurt – the yurt maker himself was the groom! I tend to write in my study which is quite plain (as a visual person I’m easily distracted) although I tend to write in the mornings and the study faces east so it’s always filled with light.

My art and textile work takes place in the conservatory. My study is just too small and doesn’t have enough all-day light.

Have you found you work in a different pattern when writing?

Yes. I write in the morning after the school run for two hours max, listening to the radio. I tend to use the rest of the day to get on with planning my teaching, marking work, and working on any art commissions.

With my art work I have even been known to work late into the night – not something I feel I could do with writing, other than exploring ideas.

What is next for you? Will we hear more from Laura?

I have just completed a manuscript for a sequel to LHML and sent off to my agent. It is very much about crafting in the winter and the idea of creative entrepreneurship. It features knitting, felting, pantomime and a spot of baking. Like LHML it is underpinned with some Norfolk textile history, notably fisherman’s jumpers, Flemish weavers.

I’m also working on a 9-12 year old children’s novel, set in Norfolk and featuring a boy who loves to bake.

Your love of art really comes in the book; it’s obviously a real case of writing what you love!

Thank you so much! I actually did a pioneering creative writing MA in Norwich called writing the visual. My old tutor George Szirtes would be proud to hear your comment. I have just completed an installation for the Bergh Apton sculpture trail which involved textiles and writing. Some pics on my website. www.amandaaddison.com

To win one of two free copies of Laura’s Handmade Life simply comment over [on this blog post](http://www.suzical.co.uk/blog/uncategorized/lauras-handmade-life-a-review) by midnight Thursday 30th June.

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.

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!

So what did you think?
Over a week after the event, blog posts all over the web discuss the dress in detail so I won’t give you the low down of all the detail, thought the BBC have a good [article](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13249018) and [video](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13249682) of the embroidery and lace detail.

It turns out I had (Royal Wedding fever!)[http://www.suzical.co.uk/blog/quilting/do-i-have-royal-wedding-fever] I loved it! I was glued to the TV for the arrivals and ceremony – good choices in music too, though my Mum doesn’t think Jerusalem is a wedding hymn and had a huge argument with my Sister about it when she got married! We travelled over to Oxford that afternoon to visit friends for the weekend and gate crash their local Royal wedding party – D came second in the welly wanging competition!

I loved all three dresses – Kate’s wedding and evening dresses and her Pippa’s bridesmaid dress…
I was pleased with the choice of designer and loved that they chose to use the Royal School of Needlework for the lacework. I can kind of understand why some people thought that an Alexander McQueen dress should be more controversial, but really? For a British Royal wedding of that scale?? I think they got the mix just right – the sleeveless bodice with lace sleeves – apparently Royalty have to have sleeves- I loved that lace. I’ve been reading all the details I can get my hands on about the making of it, though apparently the detail will be kept quiet for 30 years, surely this comes under the freedom of information act??

The simplicity of her evening gown was just stunning – hopefully it allowed her to let her hair down on the dance floor that evening, she certainly deserved a good boogy after the formalities of the morning!

It looks like all things are hotting up for the Royal Wedding tomorrow – apart from the weather, it was spring like on my way to work this moring and we had summer weather for the Easter weekend. As an aside it was also really quiet travelling to work – I had seats on both trains and the tube this morning, unheard of generally!

How are you preparing for the big day? Are you getting into all the build up? I had thought it was pretty much passing me by, until I realised I was writing a blog post about it.. I’ve obviously absorbed more than I’d thought!

We have the Royal wedding memorabilia I bought Little Ted the [Happy land Royal wedding set](http://www.elc.co.uk/HappyLand-Royal-Wedding-Set/131121,default,pd.html) and spent 10 minutes hunting round Morrisons for a droppped Duke of Edinburgh on Monday.

I bought tea towels as gifts for an upcoming trip to the States. Our local charity shop is selling them and as I was leaving I spotted a rack of men’s shirts for £2 each, it didn’t take long to find 5 which were 100% cotton and added straight into my stash for quiting! I have my eye on a pattern for quilted pot holders from an old issue of Sew I love the idea of recylcing in this way. My Mum is making a quilt for my nephew with a pair of my pyjamas and a pilfered shirt from my Brother-in-Law’s wardrobe..

We’re even going to a street party tomorrow – not our street, we’ll be gate crashing a friend’s.. taking a picnic and hoping the weather cheers up!

I am looking forward to seeing the dress, I’m surprised at how well the secret is holding up, though it has to be a British designer right?? It would be great if there was a ‘making of the dress’ documentary.

Speaking of dresses, the BBC have a [lovely slide show of Royal wedding dresses](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13207649). The oldest is Princess Charlotte’s dress from 1816 they have the artwork from the wedding as well – obviously no photos back then!

While looking for photos to illustrate this post I stumbled across [this amazing embroidery pattern](http://thehappyzombie.com/blog/?p=471) from the happy zombie to comemorate the day. The Flickr page has all rights reserved so you’re going to have to follow the link – trust me it’s worth it!