The lovely Hannah and Rosie, over at The New Craft Society, told me about the Hillarys craft competition and I decided to take the challenge! Hillarys sent me a 100 x 100cm  piece of their fabric and I had to make an original craft design and I could use any other craft materials necessary. Now, it just so happens that the competition coincides with Mothers’ Day so I decided to make something special for my mum because mums always prefer homemade gifts, don’t they? So I designed an embroidered bolster cushion…

I knew I wanted to try embroidery for the first time and the fabric has beautiful peacocks on it so the first thing I did was try out some basic embroidery stitches to emphasise the peacocks.

I decided to make a bolster cushion as I know my mum needs new cushions for her bed. The added bonus of this particular cushion is that you can use it to store your winter or summer duvet – so no under bed or on top of cupboard storage needed. I cut the 100 x 100cm piece into two equal sized pieces of 50 x 50cm. This wasn’t quite enough to make a kingsize duvet bolster cushion so I added a 12cm fabric panel in the middle and at the ends.

Once I had sewn the five panels together I made a channel at either end of the bolster for the ribbon to be fed through.

Pop a safety pin on the end of the ribbon to help feed it through the channel. Each piece of ribbon will need to be about 60cm long. I chose this lovely purple velvet to pick out the purple flourishes in the birds’ tails.

Feed the ribbon through. It’s good to have a lighter weight fabric at the ends as this draws closed more easily.

Fold your kingsize duvet in half, half again and then half again and stuff into the bolster (good to have someone to help push it in from one end and pull it from the other!)

Once the duvet is in you can tie up your ribbons.

I hope my mum likes it – both practical and beautiful!

I am definitely going to make another one of these for myself; I have two duvets on top of my wardrobe that take up so much space and this is such a comfy addition to the bed as it’s all lovely and squidgy – perfect for reading in bed.

Thank you very much to Hillarys for the fabric (and the challenge) and fingers crossed for the competition!!

Katy x

I had the great pleasure this weekend of trying out silk screen printing for the very first time at Zeena Shah’s studio. Jules’s brother, Jamie, bought me the course for a Christmas present and I’ve been really excited about it as I’ve always wanted to give it a go.

It turned out that not only is Zeena a great teacher but probably the nicest peson I’ve ever met and created a great atmosphere – from experience there is nothing worse than a silent, sombre craft course. Her studio, tucked away off Old Street,  is also a really inspiring space, crammed full of vintage finds and inspiration. I was joined on the day by four other lovely ladies and we spent the time chatting, drinking tea and creating: the perfect start to the weekend!

I would whole-heartedly recommend the course; it is a snip at £55, especially considering it is four hours long and you walk away with a printed tote bag and tea towel. It’s also a craft that you can easily develop at home once you are armed with Zeena’s expertise.

I’ve been trialling the new Nokia Lumia for the last couple of weeks so I took that along with me. All of these photographs are completely unedited so you can judge the camera for yourselves…

The first step was to find inspiration, for those of us who didn’t have ideas for designs. Zeena’s studio is full of lovely things that were inspiration enough but she also has a collection of beautiful print books that were a perfect starting point.

We then had to cut out our designs. I decided to make a tea towel of jellies and a tote bag with my blog name printed on it.

We picked and mixed our own colours, which is more difficult than you think.

Zeena was on hand to help us with the actual printing bit. This is Faye’s rather lovely cloud design.

The first round of prints went really well – Flora’s orange print is great.

I love my new branded tote bag! I might have to use this as my logo from now on.

And the second round of prints was beautiful. I loved Ruth’s blue floral print and Faye’s baby-grows were too much to bear!

My jelly print in all its glory.

Such a fun day and I am definitely going back for more as Zeena is now running a print and make your own lampshade – amazing!

Katy x