Pattern 1: Let's Rock'n'Roll for the Pencil Roll!

I think it is no great generalisation to say that all members of the species homo sapiens fall into one of Two Camps.

Camp 1: People who would laugh their heads off, if not give themselves a mirth induced hernia if you ever suggested they might like to try and sew something.  Yes, you know some of these homo sapiens?  I have lots of friends like this.  Literally guffaw if I ask them if they sew.  Snort, maybe even dribble a little with hilarity.  And thank goodness for them, the lovely gorgeous lovelies, for they are my customers!  Hello you all!  Hello!  Come and buy something?  Yes?  I'll see you in a mo, at the till.

Camp 2: People who see lovely fabricky things in the shops and say, oh isn't that lovely, oh I really like it, ooh I'd love to buy that, oh darn it and [insert expletive] I could make that myself!  Oh for heaven's sake.  Oooh, expletive and curse, I can't buy that, can I, seriously.  I really could probably make it myself for far less.

Well and hello to you too!  You are my loyal bloggy audience, and we are very excited to announce that we are going to be selling our 'recipes' as we like to call 'em, over at the OriginalStitch shop.

We take enormous pride in our recipes - they take up a huge amount of brain space in our bonces, and are developed with the utmost of pernicketty, pedantic, detail-seeking, maddeningly accurate obsessiveness, with the pure aim that they are easy peasy lemon squeezy to follow.   Each one has been dreamed up, researched, and tested - for each pattern several prototypes are made until it is just right.  Then they are painstakingly written up, and lovely little diagrams drawn, by me, with a great amount of concentration (you should see my drawing frown - it is quite awesome.  Sometimes I even poke my tongue out).


So we ask for a little for them, because without wishing to sound like a shampoo advertisement, they are worth it!  They're nice and reasonable - the Pencil Roll, as one of our more straightforward designs, is a mere £2.95, and it's downloadable, right there and then in your confirmation email.

We will also shortly be launching The OriginalStitch Cafe, at the moment an online social network for our Stitchers - but it will soon be open to anyone who wants to make one of our recipes.  As well as all the information our Stitchers need to make our products, it will feature video tutorials for any tricky techniques in our recipes, as well as some light-hearted bits of advice on how to avoid revolting fabrics, or combine colours - stuff that might be helpful to any beginner sewing folk out there.  In time, it will become a repository for lots of lovely sewing hints and tips.  We would love to invite guest article writers in too - people who know what they're talking about!  Once we've got some friendly faces in there we'll see what people would like.

So don't delay - hop on over to the shop and buy the Pencil Roll Pattern; it makes a fab gift for kids and friends' kids - I must have made about 12 last year! 

We will be launching the recipe for each product in our collection, but need to go through the checking processes with all of them first - next up will be the Backpacks, which are just gorgeous to make, with some lovely neat techniques for fab finishing.  We'll make sure we send a newsletter out to announce each launch - so if there is one in particular you're looking out for, just sign up for the newsletter at the shop and you'll be the first to find out.

Oh, and we're on Twitter too - oh it's such fun - come and follow me!  Look there's my Twitter button just up there on the left.  Lovely.

But never mind that - there is a small person bellowing at me from a toilet, I believe, so I dread to think what that might involve.  At this point shall I stop sharing?!

OriginalStitch Giveaway

Well now.  It's about time I did some intelligence gathering!

Goodness knows my poor local friends have been bombarded with questions and demands for the last three weeks. I've shoved bits of fabricky loveliness in their mitts and demanded to know what they would pay. I've asked them to put pencils in pencil rolls and tell me what width a pencil roll pocket should be. I've requested alternative versions of things that don't work. Got them testing handles, loops, flaps, rolls, ribbons. Stood arms crossed and assessed their child playing with a product. Got them designing products on the spot.
And not a stitch of remuneration don't you know. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

'Er Nextdoor was very cross with me the other day. The afternoon previously, I not only brought my daughters round for tea, where they made a mess in her son's bedroom, and ate her food, and she had to give me copious cuppas; but I also grilled her mercilessly on my prototypes, pummelled critiques out of her, and instructed her to come up with new ideas, oh and another cuppa please love; and then she couldn't sleep all night for trying to think of the perfect memo-board magnet-pad pocket-tastic anti-husband's change device all night.

Blast you and your fabric things, she said over the fence the next day as I handed her pan back (I stole the remains of the children's tea for my own tea - class act ain't I?) I'm sure I didn't get a wink all night for thinking about colourways and drop-down menus. You.

A...n...y...w...a...y.......
So as you can see we have been very busy making things for this 'ere Christmas Fayre I've signed up for, at which we have decided to focus on Kids' Stuff.
And I would love to know your thoughts on any of them....see some pictured below. And more next week when I have prototypes.
I don't mind what thoughts, just thoughts.
Do you like?
Would you buy?
Like the fabrics?
Would you buy for a boy or a girl?  Or both?
What ages would you buy them for?
Or maybe give me a thought on something totally random, like "We found a baby toad today". It's not at all connected, but that's what Isla said to me when I said what do you think of this backpack Isla?
O...k....
So, dear opinionators - put your comment in the comment box below, and I will choose one at random out of a woolly bobble hat (or rather one of the daughters will) and you will receive one of my fabricky bits of thing. Not even a prototype, but a real OriginalStitch product, homemade with love, labelled, wrapped, and sent just as if you had ordered it. Even more excitingly, it will have been made not by shoddy old me, ooh no, but by one of my lovely new OriginalStitchers. I don't know what it will be yet, and it may have to wait till after the fayres, but think - you'll have forgotten all about it and then it will turn up out of the blue, ah! The surprise! How lovely!
Can you just imagine?!
Wherever you are, whoever you are. Tell me your thoughts. I'll post to anywhere on the planet.  The daughters will be shoving their mucky mitts in the bobble hat on Halloween, 31st October and I'll announce the winner shortly after that!
Up in the next Giveaway - the Cafe Set, Pocketiddle Bag, and Hide'n'Seek Pops.  Aren't you just dying to know what the devil in a pencil roll they are? Hm?

Drum Roll for the Pencil Roll

Well. For once I am not going to be self-deprecating. After the Duffin the Mule Debacle, I have excelled myself. I am, in short, quite brilliant. Sure, this time I went careering off in the polar opposite direction and spent longer preparing for this project than I did making it, by about a million degrees. I read the instructions in Last Minute Patchwork +Quilted Gifts about 14 times. Then a couple more times just to be on the safe side. And then, just to ensure I'd understood, I wrote them out and added drawings and measurements and little notes

Yes. I did as I was told like a good girl, and well. Will you just have a look at this...
It's a pencil roll isn't it? Quite undeniably, and recognisably a pencil roll. With pens in too. 24 pens and pencils all tucked in snug. I'd have loved one of these when I was little.
Yes, no doubt about it - I'm quite astonishingly pleased with myself.
Truth be told it wasn't really that difficult, but then neither was Duffin the Mule, so it just goes to show that if you follow the instructions while you're still learning the results will be better. It was the same with the tea-cosy. I copied those instructions out too, and also did a lot of unpicking and re-measuring. Measure twice, cut once and all that. I also (and here was a stroke of forward-thinking genius) cut two of each strip so I can make another pencil roll in double quick time for another birthday. Oh aren't I just so clever?
Now, don't let me lull you into a false sense of my expertise here - there was a good bit of swearing, and a lot of head-scratching. How the devil I managed to muddle up my colour strips when I thought I'd lain them out and then immediately pinned them together in their right order I really don't know, but I did get in a terrible muddle. There was a lot of "What the...how did that...now hang on, why's that there....didn't I...where's the...which one's this?" going on. Had to unpick a load of stitching and get all the pens and pencils out again and lay out all my colour strips on the floor again to work out which one was meant to go where.

What I like about it is the colours, and the origins of the fabric, which are from all sorts of things: a bit of the border from the living-room curtains, lots of bits of the fabrics sent to me by Elizabeth, including the Woody one (can you see him? Can you see the other ones? This is like a gentle fluffy treasure hunt), old bits of soft furnishings fabric from a bag of remnants bought in Teddington, the bathroom window fabric, bits from Mum's stash I've stolen, leftover bits from my quilt, Isla's curtains in this house and the old one, an old pillowcase, an old Size 6 skirt given to me as a present by my old flatmate in Crouch End when I was a (clearly skinnier) Twenty-Something, an old ball gown my mother made me from my university days, a Husband's old tie and some I just have no idea about.
This will be a present for my goddaughter's sister, who is big fat 3, so just the right age and level of developmental obsessiveness to like sorting out pencils and pens into their rightful pockets. Once I'd finished this, the daughters helped me put them all in, and were of course exceedingly pernickety about it. Critical too. I am spared no quarter, fat or otherwise, by these daughters.
"Er, Mummy, that one isn't the right colour."
"Mummy, this pen doesn't quite fit in here."
"Oh dear, this one should be darker."
"I don't like this fabric, it's horrible isn't it?"
Yeah, thanks for that girls. The other day Hester told her father he had lots of spots, and once Isla told me my boobies looked 'tired'. Yes, one of the benefits of having children is how nice it is to be brought back down to Earth after moments of sinful pride. Just in case I was getting a bit too big for my boots or something. Although I am exceedingly clever, so there.