Win a Korbond Sewing Kit

This week we are running a great competition in association with Korbond – http://www.korbond.co.uk/ - who offer a comprehensive range of sewing accessories.

Korbond are kindly giving 2 sewing kits containing all the essentials including: dressmaking scissors, pinking shears, pins, 6 threads, 10 sewing machine needles, 6 bobbins, 12 household needles, tape measure, tailors chalk and a sewing machine servicing kit. These kits are worth £80 each.



In order to enter you need to answer one simple question:

‘What was the name of the engineer who established Korbond in 1956?’

Clue: Check the Korbond website for the answer!

Please send your answer and the following information to competitions@korbond.co.uk

Name:


Address:


DOB:


Do you currently use Korbond products?


Are you happy to receive details of new Korbond products & competitions?



Terms & Conditions:

All entries are to be received by midnight on Tuesday 4th May winners will be announced by 5pm Wednesday 5th May.

Prize will only be shipped to a UK address.

The competition is not open to Korbond employees or their families.

Only one entry per person allowed.

Focus on.....

Focus on.....

I guess you could say that sewing is in Louise’s blood, she has been sewing since her childhood, her grandmother was a tailoress and her aunt a seamstress and upholster. She is so passionate about sewing that she describes sewing as being like breathing; she just has to do it!

Although originally starting in bridal wear she now specialises in curtains and soft furnishings. Louise offers sumptuous soft furnishings made to your exact specification and can bring a touch of luxury to your home.

What is more Louise is prepared to share her years of accumulated skills and expertise and now offers classes and workshops in subjects such as making Roman Blinds, making lined curtains, making cushions, dressmaking and learning your way around your machine. Courses run on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Saturdays on demand and are held in venues in Sutton Coldfield and Solihull. So with prices starting from just £30 per day why not learn a new skill today!

Find out more about Louise either on the directory, under Louise Parkes Interiors, or by visiting her site – http://www.louiseparkesinteriors.co.uk/

Words of thanks

We've recently had some really nice thank you messages from recent prize winners and from a company we recently ran a competition with and we wanted to share these lovely messages.  It's nice to know that the prizes are going to a good home.

From Joan Tildesley - winner of the Janome BCC-30 sewing machine

Dear Fiona, The machine has arrived this morning in perfect condition. I am so chuffed. I cannot describe to you the amount of pleasure this machine is going to give. I have written a few lines below which I hope convey my feelings. A beautiful compact machine, it is so simple to use. It has everything that I require. My sister in law, Veronica who was a wonderful teacher when I first started to make my own garments died of breast cancer 3 years ago. Each time I look at the machine it will be with the fondest memories of her. It is though I was destined to have it. The machine is a wonderful idea in support of research into breast cancer I have been passing on Veronica's sewing bug to my 12 year old niece, who visited this afternoon to look at the new sewing machine. We have christened it 'Veronica' in her honour. Our plan is to spend three days together next week choosing fabric and a pattern so as she can make her first garment using this sewing machine because it is so simple to use. We will sew together. I will soldier on with 'Beryl' whilst she beavers away on 'Veronica'. Thank you. Kindest regards Joan Tildesley.

Veronica Dixon - winner of How to Use your Sewing Machine
Hi Fiona, Thanks for sending me the sewing book prize in the post so quickly - it arrived today in perfect condition.  It will be a very useful book to have at the side of my sewing machine and I am very pleased to have won it.  Thanks for all your help - much appreciated. I wish you lots of good luck with your new website. It does look very promising indeed.  Regards, Veronica Dixon

Abbey Sewell - winner of Fabulous bags to Stitch & Make

Thanks Fiona, I’m glad I got that book, I’ve just started sewing did start with quilts but bags are more fun lol, Thanks again, Abby


Joan Field - winner of Free & Easy Stitch Style

Hi Fiona, Just a note to let you know that the book you sent me as a prize from the Birmingham craft show, has arrived. Many thanks it looks a very unusual book and I'm sure it will be put to good use. Hope the business is going well. Thanks again all the best Joan Field.

Beverley Kerry - winner of Button & Stitch

@sewingdirectory thank you so much for my prize - arrived safe and sound and can't wait to get crafting!

Dawn Walsh - winner of Home Sweet Sewn

@sewingdirectory book prize arrived, thank you. Looks great - weekend of gardening looking doubtful, maybe being crafty now instead

Sew make believe - winners of How to Make a Pleated Skirt

@sewingdirectory Our pleated skirt book has arrived! Can't wait to show our members! x

Ellie Boyd - owner of Never Forget who we recently ran a competition with

Dear Fiona, I had to put pen to paper to say a HUGE Thank You following the success of the competition that we ran on The Sewing Directory. The reaction and added coverage given to my website, blog and face book page was amazing. I have now had a chance to evaluate the stats and I was overwhelmed to find that my website visits were up by 70%. This far out measures anything else I have done before.  From our first phone-call to the holding hands along the way, the whole process was painless, friendly, fun and very very exciting.  I cannot wait to work with you again and would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the very best and continued growth and success with the site.  Yours sincerely, Ellie Boyde, Never Forget

The plus side of running this site and these competitions is to be able to make so many people happy, we hope there are many more happy winners to come :-)

Win one of 3 annual subscriptions to Cloth Magazine

Cloth magazine manages to seamless integarate sewing and fashion into one great magazine. Both the quarterly magazine and the website offer great projects for home and clothing as well as sewing tips, whats on and news.


Cloth are kindly offering 3 lucky winners an annual subscription to Cloth magazine open to both UK and overseas entries.

In order to enter they would like to know which of their projects is you favourite.

You can tell us by e-mailing fiona@thesewingdirectory.co.uk, contacting us through the site or commenting on here on the blog, facebook or Twitter.

Terms of entry:

One entry per person, open to both UK and overseas entries. The closing date is 7pm Tuesday 27th April 2010, result will be announced by Wednesday 28th. Not open to close friends or family members of The Sewing Directory or the staff of Cloth.

http://www.clothmagazine.co.uk/

Competition Winners - how are they drawn?

Congratulations to our new competition winners:

Helen J Wright from Sewing Directory Blog - A sewbox kit
Meghan from Sewbox Blog - A Sewbox kit
Bev_Metallica from Sewing Directory Twitter - Button & Stitch book
Leah Rose from Sewbox Blog - Hand-Me Up book

Please e-mail your addresses to fiona@thesewingdirectory.co.uk.

As a thank you for taking part Sewbox would like to offer you 10% off any kit bundles purchased before Friday 23rd April 2010 - just enter the coupon code "SEWINGKITCOMP" at check-out!
 

We thought you may be wondering how the prizes are drawn?  Well we're too lazy to write all the names out by hand and draw them from a hat!  So we cut and paste all the names into a spreadsheet, so each person has a number (row number) then we use the random number generator found here: http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/random/original.html to randomly select our winners.  We don't pick numbers ourselves as a person choosing a number is unlikely to pick the first or the last number, and will generally go somewhere inbetween and we don't want to rule anyone out.

 

For this draw we said we would draw one kit and book from Sewbox's blog and one from our blog, being as we decided to allow retweets as entries in the last day we added the followers of Sewbox that had retweeted to the list of entries from Sewbox's blog and the same for people who retweet the Sewing Directory's tweet.  We each used unique URLs so we could see who had retweeted who, and could use them to search Twitter for retweets. 

 

We made one sheet for Sewbox entries on our spreadsheet and one for The Sewing Directory then set the random number generator to work!

Starting with Twitter

Until about a week before I launched The Sewing Directory I had never had any real dealings with Twitter.  I had occasionally looked up a celebrity to see what they were tweeting about but Facebook had always been my social network of choice.

I had been told that Twitter is more effective than Facebook for getting people interested in what you are doing, and meeting like minded people so I decided to give it a go - and I have to say they were right!  In just under a month I have now tweeted 230 times and have almost 250 followers!  Plus i've picked up a load of useful information.  It's a great way to let people know about our competitions and any new articles we have added to the site, as well as to retweet what our customers are up to and help spread the word. 

I have to admit though that even to someone who spends a fair amount of time on computers (Ok a ridiculous amount of time!) it was still rather baffling to know where to start.  What you you tweet about? How do you find people to follow? Are there etiquette rules to follow? What do #, RT, #FF etc mean?  I've had to pick it all up through trial and error, and asking other people.  Then this morning I discovered this great blog post that tells you everything you need to know about starting off with Twitter.  So I thought I would save you all a lot of time and hassle and share it with you all:

http://craftbloguk.blogspot.com/2010/04/twitter-basics.html

So now you have no excuse not to get tweeting!  And whilst you're at it please don't forget to follow us - @sewingdirectory

New competition - In conjunction with Sewbox

Sewbox Competition


In celebration of the launch of Sewbox http://www.sewbox.co.uk/ we have teamed up with Sewbox to offer a brilliant all in one kit to two lucky winners. These great kits come with a sewing pattern, matching fabric, interfacing, thread, zip etc - they've done the hard work to match everything up so that you can get sewing sooner! They currently have 6 great kits to choose from and are adding more every few weeks, click here to view the kits you could win, worth up to £32.50 each.

Plus we have 2 great books up for grabs - Button and Stitch by Kristen Rask and Hand-Me-Ups by Lorine Mason kindly provided by David & Charles. Please visit their website or their rucraft website to find a great range of sewing and craft books. We have reviewed both these books here. Sewbox also stock a range of fabric and notions perfect for making the projects in these 2 books.

How to enter

Post a comment on this blog or Sewbox's blog to let us know which of the kits you would choose if you win, plus which fabric you would like with the kit. Don't forget to follow our blog to find out if you've won and to find out details of The Sewing Directory's weekly competitions.

If you blog about the competition you get an additional entry, but don't forget to post a link to your blog so we know to give you a 2nd entry.


Competition Rules

All entries must be received by 7pm Tuesday 20th April 2010. The competition is open to UK residents only, with despatch to UK addresses only.

No multiple entries; please only comment on one of the blogs. We will pick one book winner and one kit winner from each blog.

The winner will be drawn at random from all of the entries and announced on the morning of Wednesday 21st April 2010. If you have won you will need to claim the prize by sending us your full address so that we can ship the prize to you.

Focus on.....

Focus on.....         

Trefriw Woollen Mills are traditional Welsh weavers producing Welsh tapestry and tweed. They manufacture travel rugs and bedspreads and their tapestry and tweed is used to make cushions, bags, jackets, hats, purses amongst other things.

The mill has been running for over 150 years and is open to the public, giving you the chance to view, or take part in the weaving process yourself. They are open all year around (except 25/26th Dec and 1st January) and offer a working museum, a shop, a weaver’s garden and a tea room. Events include an annual textile market, a natural dye day and hand spinning workshops. If you are holidaying in North Wales it’s the ideal place for a day out.

Should you wish to find out more about Trefriw, or to purchase their beautiful tweed, tapestry or yarns then please visit www.t-w-m.co.uk

Never Forget...to follow us!

We have just joined up with Never Forget (http://www.neverforget.co.uk/) to run a giveaway for our followers.

Never Forget are a company offering emberoidered gifts such as towels, baby gifts, teddy bears and much more.  They have kindly offered £75 of vouchers to form 3 prizes:
£40 top prize,
£25 second prize,
£10 third prize

All you have to do to be in with a chance to win is follow us - on Blogger, Twitter and Facebook, each place you follow us gets you a seperate entry, and if you follow both of us you get double the number again.  In total you can get 6 entries for the draw, plus you'll then automatically be entered for any future 'follower' draws we do without having to do anything further!

The links are all below, the closing date is Tuesday 13th (midnight), winners will be anounced on Wednesday.

If you're already a follower then you don't need to do anything, you will automatically be entered into the draw.

Sewing Directory:


http://twitter.com/sewingdirectory

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Sewing-Directory/333025848809?ref=ts

http://www.thesewingdirectory.blogspot.com/


Never Forget:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Never-Forget-Unique-and-Personal-Just-Like-You-wwwneverforgetcouk/363901328624?ref=ts

http://never-forget-ellie.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/neverforgetcouk

Did you know....

That we list sewing groups for free on The Sewing Directory? 

As sewing groups are not run as businesses but more as charities we decided to list sewing groups for free.  So what better way to keep people updated with where and when you are meeting, what exhibitions or trips you have got planned. 

So if you run, or are the member of a sewing group why not add your details onto the directory now.  Visit the sign up page here: http://www.thesewingdirectory.co.uk/advertise-with-us/

Free sewing books

Great news - the lovely people at Anova Books (http://www.anovabooks.com/) have agreed to give us books for regular giveaways through the website. 

However....they want to know which of their books you would like to win.  Have a look through their site and let me know which of their books is your favourite.  You can do this by either posting a comment on this blog, commenting on Facebook or Twitter, or e-mail fiona@thesewingdirectory.co.uk

By letting me know your favourite you are not only helping select future prizes, but you automatically get entered to win the first book they have donated - Simplicity - How To Use A Sewing Machine.  Read our review of this book here: http://www.thesewingdirectory.co.uk/news/2010/03/29/book-review-and-giveaway/