What a week!

Wow, this last week has been a very exciting, so much going on!

Theo Paphitis

First up I was picked by Theo Paphitis (of Dragon's Den fame) for his Small Business Sunday!  He invites all small businesses to send him a tweet about their business on a Sunday evening (between 5-7.30 using hashtag #sbs) and he picks 6 of them to RT, giving you great exposure (he has 133,000 followers!) and lots of new followers.  I never realised what a response I would get hundreds of new fans, great new contacts and so many congratulatory tweets it crashed my Blackberry!

Secondly, with the business going so well lately, and building so fast that i'm struggling to keep on top of it, I've decided it's time to get someone else on board to help me.  So I am very excited to have avid sewer Beth Edmondson (aka. Madscouser ) joing the team.  Starting from tomorrow Beth will be helping out on the social networking side of things to start off with, and from there who knows!  So that you know when it's Beth posting she will put (B) after all her updates.  Will be great to see what she brings to the site.

Finally, I've been given a versitle blogger award by Bella Boutique!  I've been asked to share this award with 7 other bloggers, linking to them below, and then to share 7 random facts with you all.  I've had to think long and hard about what to share - so many random things! So first off here's the facts:

1) I am currently learning to speak Welsh
2) I lived in France, and when to school there, when I was 14.
3) I am a total bookworm!  I can't imagine a life without books, I read every chance I get!
4)  My favourite meal is my mum's homemade lasagne
5) I've always wanted to go to both China and Eygpt (maybe one day...)
6)I'm hooked on American drama series (CSI. NCIS, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Dexter, Criminal Minds...I could go on forever!)
7) Last but not least my lifelong dream (other than winning the lottery of course) is to be a published, and ideally successful, fiction author.

Then onto the bloggers that I pass this versitile blogger award onto, please do go check out their blogs for sewing and fabric happiness:
The Fabric Loft
House of Marmalade
Backstitch
Suzy Sewing Blog
Flossie Teacakes
Mary Emmens
Quilt Me Happy

Sewing Pattern Giveaway with The Fabric Loft

Hello everyone,

It's competition time again!  We have just announced the winners of our sewing book giveaway with R U Craft here.  We now have a new competition running with The Fabric Loft  where 7 lucky winners will win a sewing pattern of their choice from The Fabric Loft website.  That's a whole lot of winners!

For full details of how to enter see here: http://www.thesewingdirectory.co.uk/news/2011/06/15/pattern-giveaway-with-the-fabric-loft/

Good luck to all that enter.

Focus on.....

Focus on.... Pretty Goods

Pretty Goods is a 3 pronged business run by the talented Deborah Good. Deborah teaches sewing, makes and sells handmade goods and offers a soft furnishing service.

Teaching wise Deborah offers tuition to adults or children primarily focused on soft furnishings (cushions, curtains, throws etc) but can also teach you how to get the most from your sewing machine and basic sewing skills. She is happy to teach in groups or on an individual basis. Find more about her classes here.

She can make all types of soft furnishings for her customers, and advise on fabric choice, design and fit. She also makes a range of one off items, largely in unique vintage fabrics. Items include gifts, bags, cushions, and kitchen accessories and can be viewed in her shop: http://prettygoods2.blogspot.com/ and she also sells at local craft fairs in Kent.

Plus as if all of that doesn’t keep her busy enough she also organises a successful craft fair called the Kitsch and Stitch Vintage and Makers Fair. The next fair will be on the 3rd of September, further details can be found here.

To find out more about Pretty Goods please visit http://www.prettygoods.co.uk/

Focus on.....

Focus on.... Byson Repairs & Alterations

Byson pride themselves on being able to alter and repair pretty much anything! From ball gowns to horse blankets, motorcycle leathers to knitwear. Some of their more unique requests include a leather dress and a parachute for a teddy!

Their speciality is motorcycle wear, both leather and textile. They also repair classic and reproduction flying kit, having a stock of genuine wartime hides for the repair of RAF (Irvin) flying jackets / trousers.

They are based in Barkway, Hertfordshire but have customers coming to them from as far away as Ontario. To find out more please visit their websites. They have a website dedicated to their leather work: www.bysonleather.co.uk/ and http://www.bysonrepairs.co.uk/

Colour Challenge

I read about the colour challenge over on the Very Berry Blog on a Friday evening when I really didn't feel like doing any work and fancied something creative to this was perfect.  Ali at Very Berry asked that we picked a theme and collected together images fitting that theme to see what colour combinations we came up with. I wrote this post straight away, before she had posted the full details (here) of how she proposed we did it.  I've held off publishing this post for the last few weeks as I wanted to update it to bring it in line with her guidelines, but unfortuently I simply haven't had time so just going to post what I wrote originally.

My theme is Aqua

First up is this glorious turtle picture by Welly Dog Designs.  I just love the blues and greens in it, they fit perfectly with my theme.

Secondly, this great collection of threads which I found accompanying this post about a sustainable fashion blog called Blue Threads.

At Ali's suggestion I browsed Pinterest and came accross lots of lovely images, but my favourite one was this one from Cocytus69 on Flickr.  Stunning.

Of course you can't think of aqua without conjuring up an image of a beautiful crystal clear sea, just like the one pictured above from http://ocsarawesomewilde.blogspot.com/

How beautiful is this picture of an aqua sea shell from the Natural History Museum in Vienna?  Another great Flickr find, this time from MoonJazz.  This was the picture that inspired me the most and I wanted to see what fabrics I could find which use the colours from this image.

 

After having a little browse online I came accross the Amy Butler Daisy Chain bundle from Gone To Earth.  I think these fabrics really take the colours from the shell picture above.  It's good to see how the colour palette from an image such as that can translate into fabric.

I thought I had better bring this post to an end before it fills pages on end!  But you can see more over on my Pinterest account.  My aqua board is here.