Happy New Year to you all and I really hope it is that; a year where we find and experience happiness alongside and in spite of what is going on around us. As friends are increasingly saying, “Be positive but stay negative!”
I wonder how many unexpected projects start with something like, “I went into a cupboard/a drawer/a box/the loft looking for X and instead I found…” It’s something I suspect I’ve typed more than a few times and here we are again. Just before New Year I went into a cupboard looking for some padded envelopes and I found eight kits for making upcycled jewellery kilt pin brooches like the one below which were left over from a workshop I taught back in 2019.
They were just popped into paper bags but it occurred to me that I could box them up nicely and put them in my Etsy shop. Kits seem to be quite popular at the moment and perhaps they would appeal to people who would enjoy the challenge of seeing what unique design they could make out of their kit rather than making the item on the front of the box.
I had some cardboard two piece boxes that I was given a little while ago (Thanks Ruth – I knew they would come in useful!!) that just needed making up and then I carefully cut the label off the paper bag and stuck it onto the front. The boxes are lovely quality and already they were looking really professional.
The original packs were designed for avid stitchers, but because these might be bought by or for someone who doesn’t have the vast amounts of stash that most of us do, I added an embroidery and a beading needle and a fat plait of assorted threads to the pack and reworked the instructions into a neat little booklet. This one is based on purples and reds (there are some lovely dusky purple seed beads hiding under the Magpie Pack) and is available here in my Etsy shop with free UK P&P.
This one is themed around autumnal russets and golds and is available here.
Yes, I did say there were eight kits and I’ve only listed two, but making up the boxes is taking a lot longer than I thought. As they are such good quality they have a triple fold plus tabs for each side and are taking me at least half an hour to make!
Over Christmas I’ve got into bad habits of browsing or playing sudoku on my tablet in the evenings so I’m trying to get at least half an hour away from the screen sewing before I go to bed. The last time I worked on my medieval tiles printed piece was in early November when I was playing embroidery chicken with the thread.
I’ve managed to find some roughly similar colour and weight perle thread to the lot that finally ran out on me and so I’ve picked this up as my before bed project. I’ve taken out the tacking stitches and am putting a second row of split stitch round the ’tiles’ to give the lines more weight (top left). There might be a third row yet but I’m seeing how it progresses.
I’ve also started back stitching round the motifs.
A nice straightforward project before bed but I just need to know when to stop. “I’ll finish when I get to the end of this piece of thread/the next piece of thread/the end of this motif,” took me until the other side of 1am last night…
Under A Topaz Sky 