not much sewing!

Here I was thinking I was on a roll and then what happens? A whole week has passed by and I've hardly sewn a thing. Grrrr!

We had a cracking day out for Father's Day yesterday. We went to Cannon Hall and the kids loved it at the working farm, we've now got a Pygmy Goat in the running for our next pet!

I've also been super busy making up new warm and cool tonal bundles for Simply Solids. These will be in the shop once I've had them photographed properly!

The only sewing I've managed is these teeny tiny hexies that will be turned into my secret swap partners name badge for the Fat Quarterly Retreat next month - I'm planning on getting this finished this week!

Finally I just wanted to share with you all a quick picture of my new tattoo. It's sewing themed and I am proper in love with it! Its on my left inner forearm and is huge:

What do you think? It was designed by the very talented Sarah and inked by the equally talented Frank who works at The Bleeding Art in Huddersfield.

I adore it and can't wait for the next installment!!!

Seriously Mahoosive Giveaway!

I've joined up with Fiona over at The Sewing Directory today to offer an amazing and mahoosive giveaway competition! 

Please head over there now to see what you need to do to enter. Go on then. Shoo!

June's Sew Solid Stash Club

Here's a heads up on a little change I've had to make to the schedule - arggh!

June should be greys according to the colour wheel but as my supplier has not one bolt of any grey in the warehouse that's not possible. Unfortunately I'm not magic. Boo.

Anyway after much debate and discussion with the supplier regarding available stock July has jumped forward a month and it's lovely reds will now be June's colour - Hooray!

Here's what you can be expecting:

There will be Kona Red, Burgundy, Chinese Red, Cayenne, Poppy & Wine.

I think you'll agree when you receive your bundle that there's a nice range of colours (they all look dark on screen or is it my eyes? It's late!) I didn't just want the in your face fire engine red, though naturally that's in there too!

You've got until the 15th to sign up to stash club and get June's colours. Check out the details and sign up here.

PS: Don't forget the Tempting Tuesday offer is on until midnight tonight here.

Tempting Tuesday Offer

Tomorrow sees another Tempting Tuesday offer over at my shop Simply Solids.

15% off the cute FQ bundle shown below as well as yardage in those four colours too.

Be quick the offer is only valid from Midnight Monday 10/6 to Midnight Tues 11/6.

Kona Apricot, Lemon, Periwinkle & Bubblegum

Happy Shopping!!!

busy what me?!

This last couple of weeks have whizzed by in a blur and here we are at the beginning of June! 

I've spent lots of quality time with the family and zilch time sewing, which has been great whilst it was happening and the kids have loved having my undivided attention but my workload for the next couple of weeks is now huge!! Hey Ho, home/work balance is something we're all working on right?

I wanted to share some pictures of what we've been up to so here you go:

That's right folks we went to visit the Harry Potter studio tour! It was a joint birthday present for the hubs and Holly from my parents and what can I say...A.MAZ.ING!!

We're all Harry Potter mad here so it was quite emotional for some of us, ahem, read me, to be on the actual real life set. Afterwards we hopped on the train to central London to do a bit of sight seeing and that's when the battery on my phone died. As did the hubs phone. Typical. So no pictures, which is a real shame as it was a glorious day. 

The day after we returned from London, the kids and I had a short break to the East Coast in my friends caravan, she was there with her son too.

As you can tell the weather was pretty poor, it was freezing most days but we still had fun on the beach and in the park! Its just nice to be away and have a change of routine isn't it?

The sunshine appeared of course when we came home, so Holly has made the most of it and got in a spot of gardening over the weekend!

Until next time when I promise there will be some sewing progress of some sort made!

staple love

Today I spent a very lovely and much needed sewing day with my sewing bestie Katy, of I'm A Ginger Monkey fame!

Katy has just returned from teaching her now infamous EPP class at Camp Stitchalot in the USA. I'm a bit peeved I didn't go if I'm honest, it sounded like huge fun and there were lots of cool sewing types there! Camp Stitchalot is organised by Brenda of Pink Castle Fabrics so you know it's a winner straight away right? 

Next year I'm going. For sure. In fact the thought of a weekends sewing in the warm USA sunshine with lots of my sewing buddies makes me proper smile!!

Anyhow today we sewed and sewed and it was great fun.

We made a good start on Staple dresses for us both. If you don't know the pattern then I urge you to go and check it out here. It's such a wearable, versatile style and the fun you can have with fabric choice is unlimited isn't it?

I'm making mine in the most gorgeous Anna Maria Horner Linen.

Katy is making hers in her signature look, leopard print right?!

I'll fully update you soon once the dress is finished, I've just got the arm casings to stitch on, some shirring on the back of the dress and the hemming to do. 

Yay for clothes making!!

Finally for today here's a snapshot of my now 10 year old daughter (what the what? How the heck did that happen?) opening her birthday presents this morning - its a sewing machine in there by the way!!

Now this a massive finish...

I cannot actually believe I am finally blogging this massive finish!

Hot off the sewing machine around 10 minutes ago is this:

I cannot tell you how pleased I am it's finished and tomorrow it will be packaged up and sent to the lovely Angela Walters to work her quilting magic on it! Eeeep!

When it returns via the equally lovely Quilt Dad in July and I am reunited with this beauty at the Fat Quarterly retreat I will do a full finish post. So for now, safe journeys my gorgeous Swoon quilt........