Excuse me while I blow a little dust off this blog… where did August and September go?! I am amazed to find that I haven’t written a post since July!! So it’s definitely time for a catch up and I have a few new posts planned over the next few weeks to make up for the last two months. Let’s start with the Aurifil Thread Labs subscription box which I’m involved in. My project went live yesterday on the 1st of October. As I’m sure regular readers will know I have been working with Aurifil, the superior Italian thread company, for many years now. I became a designer in 2017 and an Aurifilosopher ..read more

I’ve been spending so much of my time on hand sewing recently including some new embroidery projects so I thought we could catch up here with an embroidery post. I even have a new pattern in a magazine, something I don’t do so much these days. But I really like the embroidery magazine Stitch and about once a year I like to design something for them. This latest project is Barge Art Blooms. It’s inspired by the traditional folk art found on canal boats. I have always loved this style of decorative art, sometimes called ‘Castles and Roses’ and I really enjoyed both designing and stitching this ..read more

It’s been a while since I had a project in a magazine but now, just like buses, two have landed at exactly the same time. One is quilting and the other is embroidery which adds a nice balance to this post. The first one is my Landscape Wardrobe mini quilts as featured in the latest issue of Love Patchwork and Quilting – number 107, out now in the UK. They even made the cover, right at the top there. I’ve been going on about sustainable sewing for a while now and last year I made big efforts to shift away from making new quilts with new fabric to thinking up projects that would work with pre ..read more

Here’s a bit of festive embroidery to ease you into the Christmas period. Plus I have some exciting embroidery related news to share in this post so please read on… This is my Scattered Stars Pillow which uses star shapes and jewel colours to create a cushion that looks good at Chrismas but can be used all year round! It’s also my first ever project for Love Embroidery!  I’m delighted to finally get a chance to design for this relatively new magazine as it’s a sister publication of my regular quilting magazines Today’s Quilter and Love Patchwork and Quilting. It launched when I was busy ..read more

Edited: GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED! Congratulations to commenter number 8 – Jo!!  I will email you Jo (and great colour choices!). Commiserations to everyone else.  Thanks so much for entering everyone! Please read on for the Round up Post… The Modern Crewel Embroidery Book Tour has been happening over the last two weeks and this round-up post is a lovely way to share all the beautiful items that my guests have created in one place. The Scandi Fish hoop was one of the most popular designs with both Susan Ache and Sarah Ashford stitching up bright colourful versions! Here’s  my origi ..read more

Today is the start of a two week Instagram Book Tour to celebrate the publication of my new book Modern Crewel Embroidery.  It’s happenning over on Instagram because so few of my guests keep a blog, however some of them do and will be writing blogposts as well, AND I will be writing a round up post at the end of the two weeks so I can feature all of the ‘stops’ here and share them with you. As you can see by the schedule above I am kicking things off on day one!  Writing an accompanying blog post gives me room to share far more of the book and space to write more about it. Over the ..read more

It’s time for some embroidery! The time has come to start talking about my new Modern Crewel Embroidery book with a little more urgency as it is due for release next month! This means I can now share some of the projects from the book and tell you a little more about it. I’ve got some exciting plans to help celebrate the release including a book tour and a launch event. Plus I have a new Aurifil thread box to accompany the book which was launched at Festival of Quilts but got it’s official launch blogpost on the Auribuzz blog just a week ago. I did a few new things for this and wanted to shar ..read more

I have finished my Temperature Quilt top!  And I have started a Temperature Embroidery! I started the ‘Weather Bubble’ Temperature Quilt just over a year ago on 28th March and finished it yesterday 5th April. Each row is 17 squares and there are 22 rows (the closest I could get to 365 days). You can read all about it here and an update here. It’s been such a therapeutic project to do during this last year, and a sort of patchwork diary.  I’ve become a little obsessed by recording the temperature every day and I don’t think I can stop now! So I’ve begun on a new temperature project ..read more

It’s ages since I posted about embroidery and I realised that I hadn’t even shared the exciting news here about my forthcoming book ‘Modern Crewel Embroidery’ which is due out in October.  Since my Moxie arrived I’ve been very taken up with quilting but in the background there is always some embroidery going on and specifically stitching with wool (the definition of crewel). I can’t share much more about the book yet other than to tell you it contains ’15 fresh samplers stitched with wool’! It’s published by Stash Books, who published my New Patchwork and Quilting Basics book, and it’s a ..read more