Jolly Red

All go for Mothering Sunday

2012-03-09T12:55:00.000Z

...or Mother's Day, whatever you choose to call Sunday 18th March. A special day for Mums, that's the main thing.

We have had lots of orders in this week to be sent to a different address so I think some Mums will be receiving tapestry and cross stitch kits as their special treat. I like to think that they might also get the ironing and washing up done for them - and in my case, perhaps have the dog walked too - as time is the treat we all need!

A big thank you for all orders, we'll be sending kits out up until next Friday but if you can please place your order by Wednesday to be sure of it arriving on time.

New kits for spring celebrations

2012-02-27T12:28:00.009Z

This weekend we really did get the feeling that spring is in the air. It was fantastic to spend time outdoors, and not have to put five layers on when taking the dog for a walk. In common with many people my other almost full-time job is as a washerwoman. This weekend I enjoyed breathing in the smell of clean towels on the washing line, even Flik's blankets didn't escape the washing machine. You can't beat washing that's been out on the line, one of life's simple pleasures!

As spring is on its way, that means that it's the start of the wedding season. We have two lovely new kits that are perfect for celebrations - not only weddings and anniversaries but also for house warming gifts. They are both starter kits, so won't take very long to stitch at all.

Here they are. First, we have Home and Heart:

Read more about the design here. You will have lots of wool left over from your kit so will be able to enjoy adding initials or a message in the border. Or maybe you'll repeat some of the hearts around the edge of the design...or of course keep it small if you're running out of time!

The other new design is The Big Day:

As with Home and Heart, there is plenty of room to personalise the design. You can add initials and maybe a date, or repeat some of the main design motifs in a new border. More information about The Big Day here.

Hope you like these new designs, don't forget to let us know how you get on if you stitch one x

Website changes re pricing

2012-02-27T11:03:00.000Z

Just letting you know that over the weekend we made a fundamental change to our website, in response to comments from customers. To explain, in recent months, a few customers have mentioned that they didn't expect VAT to be added at the checkout with their web order. So from now on, VAT is included in the price as you see it on the screen, and obviously if you live outside the VAT applicable area, VAT will be deducted at the checkout so you won't pay it.

We do hope that this will make things a bit clearer. Rest assured, prices have not suddenly gone up - we wouldn't do that to you without a warning!

Birds & Butterflies. Borders, long names...

2012-02-15T10:55:00.001Z

My goodness, you've been busy. Thank you so much for all the tapestries you've been sending in to us for making up. This week (and it's only Wednesday!) looks like being one of our busiest weeks ever. If the blog isn't getting updated as often as it should, you know why!

Birds and Butterflies is one of the most regular arrivals for our making up service. And because we get asked quite often about which colours work best, and whether or not to go for a mitred border or just standard piping and backing I thought now's a good time to have a look at some finished examples for inspiration.

First, there's Rebecca with a lavender mitred border. The mitred border and the colour work so well.

On a sad note, the fabric company we've been using for over a decade has recently discontinued this exact shade but they are sending samples of another one which is quite similar, so I'm hopeful that this will soon be an option once again. I'm also hunting out new suppliers, so as soon as I can I'll let you know how that goes too.

Hannah doesn't have a mitred border. We've used two colours for the making up - turquoise for the piping and red for the backing. A jolly red of course (!), a popular choice for Butterflies.

Last week Jean, one of our regular visitors came in to the workshop to pick up her Birds and Butterflies cushion and her Old English Cockerel. I had my camera at the ready and managed to take a picture of Jean and Lin and put it on our Facebook page. I'm sure Jean's Cockerel tapestry will emerge in a future blog post, but for today we'll take a peep at her Butterflies Sampler.

The first thing you'll notice is that the name on Jean's cushion is Charlotte, no prizes for spotting that! I mention it because the name Charlotte often seems to present stitchers with problems, but you can see here that it can fit comfortably into the space provided on the name panel. When Jean came in to collect her kit we gave her a few smaller alphabet charts, so please feel free to do the same and request them for your kit if you're a bit anxious about fitting a long name into the space.

Jean likes our three colours option when we make up her tapestries. For her Butterflies we used blue for the mitred border, red for the piping and lime green for the backing.

It was a great combination, the finished cushion was gorgeous.

And as for long names, here's a reminder from last year of a Butterflies cushion featuring a very long name - Cassandra.

If you're a bit worried about ordering a kit because you've got to fit a long name into the name panel do give us a call and we'll put an extra smaller alphabet in with your kit. And if you've finished a tapestry and are undecided about whether to add a border or not, I hope these Butterflies have helped.

Happy stitching! xx

Christmas All Year Round

2012-02-05T13:31:00.001Z

Today I'm writing in a chilly workshop, but looking out and seeing no snow at all. The white blanket that has covered most of the UK has missed South Somerset. Sad for the children, whose last sledging days were at the end of 2009 but at least we do get to keep our 'tropical pocket' status!

Before I do this week's wool order which involves punching numbers into the computer and breathing on fingers to keep them functioning, I've been taking some of last week's tapestries off their boards. I do like our coinicidences, we get so many of them here usually involving the same tapestries with the same names stitched on - arriving at the same time.

Last week we received these two Fairytale Christmas stockings:

You can see why we have to pay attention when unpacking customer tapestries! Interesting that with both of these tapestries the name panels have been stitched in multicolour, which is how we've stitched the name 'George' on our own sample stocking. It's always your choice how to do the name panel and which colours to use, but I think most people are guided by the picture on the packaging. Certainly I think most of the Fairytales we see have multicoloured panels.

These two Olivers look fantastic. They are both goingto be made up in velvet, one of them in blue with red lining, the other in red with green lining. Again, both great choices and I can't wait to see the finished results.

We've missed the snow (so far!) and are looking on a bit enviously at people's photographs of snowmen and their sledging antics, but at least in the workshop we can guarantee Christmas all year round.

No, we aren't jealous of Maurice, Robin and Andy*

2012-01-31T15:00:00.001Z

The design season is well and truly underway here at Jolly Red. I've had my old sketchbooks out, and I've been gathering up all the scribbles and ideas for the part-designed A-Z Animals and getting them finished - at last!

Here's an update on progress so far:

As always, please excuse the picture quality. I was inspired to take this picture this morning, having done a spot of ironing (madness!) before heading off to the workshop. Ironing board became impromptu work surface and spare room became studio.

It's funny how ideas for the designs can change so much over the years, and some of the new ones will bear (excuse the pun - 'b' is on the list) no resemblance to my initial ideas for them.

Keep watching this space, and if you are waiting for a particular letter do get in touch. Sign up for our email Newletter (on the right) if you want to have our regular updates, and any other news.

*Did you get the possibly obscure title reference? Only obscure if you aren't a BeeGees fan! B G N V < BeeGee envy! x

An organised work space in five easy steps

2012-01-27T17:40:00.003Z

It seems as though everybody has been having a bit of a sort out at home and at work, and we've been doing the same here in the Jolly Red workshop. We aren't quite finished yet, there are still cross stitch threads to move into the wool room and we need to organise which kits will go where in the packing area. But already the space feels so much better, and more things seem to be in the 'right' places.

Here are some tips I put together as I went along, I hope they'll be helpful if you're planning your own tidy up/ space shake-up:

1. Clarify your objectives, or 'Are you sure the mess and upheaval will be worth it?' If not, don't bother starting.

For us, it became clear at the end of last year that we didn't have enough room for our kits. Yes, our kits - the core of our business! Not only that but they were also kept in two separate parts of the workshop, so if someone ordered a cross stitch kit and a tapestry kit we had to walk a few miles (or so it seemed) before we could even start packing the order. Daft. Action needed.

We have also been falling over our big wool delivery boxes, which seemed to have found a home for themselves outside the office door. Action needed there too. To start things off, just before Christmas Julie and I cleared a set of fairly useless shelves and they have now become a perfect box storage area:

Not very glamorous I know but what a difference! Rather than collapsing in a domino rally heap outside the office door, the boxes are now safely tucked away round the corner in the wool room. No more tripping over, and we've removed the shelves themselves which were useless to put kits on (their surface is too slippery & shiny). The base unit itself is perfect for big boxes, neatly wedged in by the wool shelves.

2. Think creatively, find extra space.

Or as it was for us: 'The only way is up!' We always need quick access to our tapestries, for photography, shop window displays, and to show to inquisitive visitors. They've always been stacked on shelves with their pads inside them, taking up LOTS of space. And we have plans for the shelves, we need them for kits. The only space we have is up in the roof.

Cue: operation mezzanine!

On Saturday the wonderful mrjollyred spent several hours creating valuable extra space for us at the end of the wool room. It's transformed the room, making it more like two separate rooms. We now have a dedicated Making Up Service room within the wool room, complete with its own customer collections area. And it's so cute! I wonder if I can fit a day bed in there? That might be another project...

It took me less than an hour to start filling the new mezzanine, after a quick trip to Ilminster Warehouse to buy some storage containers:

There's a lot more stuff up there since Saturday!

3. A serious one.

For tricky jobs, make sure you get the right help.

If necessary, call in the professionals. We were lucky with this chap, he was Corgi registered.

4. Recycle

It's easy to get carried away buying new stuff, but do you really need to? I think we can sometimes be too quick to chuck our old stuff out. There are financial benefits to keeping hold of our existing stuff, and that's probably reason enough to do so right now. But I think it's also nice to see a bit of history in a place, I like the scratches on things and imperfect surfaces. It's all part of the charm.

So...we will not be revamping our office, the tables of which are made out of old doors. There's no need, they do a perfectly good job. Office furniture can be a bit namby pamby anyway, so I'm happy to move on from officey thoughts. And Lin's cross stitch table - also made up of an old door and some clumpy posts - will also remain:

So if you've saved yourself a bit of money, and you're feeling like a good person there's only one thing for it.

5. Reward yourself with a treat!

When I initially started planning our workshop changes, I must confess that as well as the above objectives I had one other thing at the forefront of my mind. A new pressie for the workshop. It would make my life so much easier. This longed-for product had set my heart beating as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have one. A beautiful packing bench from BigDug. Can I make it quite clear at this point that I don't get any special favours from BigDug, nor do I ask for any. I just love their products. But I do think it's about time their staff took up tapestry.

I'd already cleared some space, near the table where we do the actual mailing bit of our kits. Mrjollyred was feeling a bit achey, recovering from the mezzanine building and scoffing gammon sandwiches in the office while checking his hotmail, so I would have to put the bench together myself.

Actually, I will confess that I did have to ask for a bit of diagram translating from mrjr (apologies, sisters!) and I did need to have him there to support the uprights while I did the across bits - my arms wouldn't stretch that far, and anyway how can you bash a bit of a bar in with one hand, while supporting two sides at the same time? I've put up lots of BigDug shelves on my own (to the accompaniment of a lot of clanking metal, and a fair bit of shrieking), but I think the packing bench does need two people to set it up. Or one person with three hands and very long arms.

It was all very, very worth it! Here it is set up for its inaugural packing session:

The packing bench has already made a big difference to my day in the workshop. Every week we send out lots of tapestry frames as well as completed customer tapestries as part of our Making Up Service. Now that we have the packing bench, they have their own separate area to be bubble-wrapped and packed up, we don't have to clear another table to pack them.

But as for what I said about not minding scratches or imperfections, forget it. The packing bench is a tea-free zone!

As a PS I'd add another tip, a small practical one. If like me you are a 'butterfly' (that's Lin's word, I think she means something else really), flitting around from one part of your workshop to the next maybe you should think about attaching your scissors to your worktops with elastic? That's my next job. Earlier I needed a pair, and couldn't find any but eventually tracked down four pairs, having a little party on the Making Up Service counter.

Have fun! xx

Smitten by Kittens

2012-01-20T13:45:00.001Z

Many of our customers are cat lovers. Many of our customers let us know (regularly!) what sort of designs they'd like to see, so we make sure we have some lovely cat tapestries in our cushion kit collection - just for them!

Our most recent cat design is Kitten Caboodle, which shows a patchwork of cats in a flowing border of hearts and wool. All of the cats are really smiley, some are dressed up and there's a black one in the middle for luck.

Naturally we see lots of Kitten Caboodles, Renaissance Cats and Patchwork Cats when they are sent in for our making up service. If you're a cat lover - maybe you're even stitching one of our cat tapestries? - I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the finished results. I'll concentrate on Kitten Caboodle for today's inspiration.

With this one (above), the customer didn't want the border to be included in her Kitten Caboodle cushion so she left it out. Instead, we added a mitred border in a rather fetching grey. What do you think? She also added a few extra rows of her own colours around the ouside of her tapestry. I really like it, and you might be surprised to hear how often we recommend grey as a backing colour. We've got three shades, give us a call if you need samples...
Next bunch of kitties, looking quite different to the ones above:

You probably can't quite make out the piping colour, I'm always in a rush when taking our workshop pics! It's turquoise, but it's the colour that it's been partnered with that provides the touch of genius. Here's the side view:

Gorgeous. Do we have a bigger side view?

There we go! Colours are more accurate in the pic above. Turquoise and lime green, a great combination!

Finally, here's another one. This time with pale terracotta for the piping and backing. This'll bring your blood pressure back down after the lime and turquoise! Sometimes you want a contrast with your backing fabrics, but other times you're looking for a quiet backdrop to your tapestry. There's no right or wrong, only what's best for you.

There are so many colours in Kitten Caboodle that you're spoilt for choice really. We haven't done one in red yet...I wonder what'll be next!

Mitred magic. Small designs, big impact!

2012-01-13T17:31:00.000Z

This week we've had lots of tapestries in for our Making up Service, and quite a few requests for fabric samples, some for designs to be made slight larger. One customer said that she wasn't quite sure what our 'mitred edging' is that we refer to on our Making Up Service page, so I thought that rather than waffle on over emails, a better way to answer her question might be to show examples of some of the gorgeous tapestries we've made up for customers.

First off, two tapestries from our A-Z Animals series. Tom and Tabitha were both stitched from our 'T for Tiger' tapestry kits. These two were stitched by one of our very prolific customers, and joined her extensive collection of Jolly Red designs. Each 'T for Tiger' needed different treatment. It is fun being asked to make up two of the same design up in different ways, and the results here are wonderful:

A mitred border works well for other designs too. Here are two Hens Sweet Hens tapestries, one made up simply in green with a 3" border, the other in red (our lighter red, we have a dark one too - usually for the Christmas Stockings), and piping in duck egg blue or should that be 'Araucana blue' for all you henkeepers out there!

And what of the lovely 'Pop Art Puppies'? Here's one for you to admire:

Pop Art Puppies (side view) with blue border, lavender piping and light red backing.

Here's an 'Elephant' from our starter kit range. Similar treatment to the Puppies (above). The yellow piping works brilliantly here:

You may have stitched a tapestry which strictly speaking doesn't need a border as it is already cushion sized, but you think maybe you'd like the design to be a little bit bigger. Good examples of such tapestries are 'Queen of Hearts' and 'African Tiles', each shown with different velvet treatments:

We have lots more examples but I'm sure you get the idea from this fantastic bunch!

If, having seen these tapestries, you think that your design needs an extra border it's worth spending a bit of time thinking about the colours that would work best for you as well as the width of border you'd like. Sometimes 1" is enough, just to act as a frame so don't feel you have to have a wide border.

Incidentally, if your needlepoint is going to be given as a gift, then a bit of snooping might be in order so that you know the colour/s will work in the recipient's home.

If you need any advice or want to request fabric samples just give us a call or email us and we'll be able to help you decide on colours and fabrics.

Poor January, give it a hug!

2012-01-06T16:24:00.003Z

Hello and Happy New Year again! It's nearly the end of a crazily busy week here and we've got most of your New Year tapestry and cross stitch orders out. What a nice surprise they were when I got back from my little break in Edinburgh - thank you!

This week has involved quite a bit of racing around and chasing up suppliers, the usual stuff. There was one interesting moment when one of our canvas printers reminded me that I'd sent a hurried email out to him just before Christmas to let him know that we need some printing done 'quite quickly in the New Year'...but I'd neglected to specify the designs, or how many. Whoops! All sorted now, and it's starter kits, we need lots of them to make up for weekend winter projects.

Moving on to January ponderings...there seems to be a bit of a general grump around about it, as there is every year. But the way I see it, it's going to disappear in a flash anyway so perhaps we all need to put on a brave face, make the best of the first month of the year and enjoy it for what it is. Okay a dark, cold, wet & miserable month it may be but so what! We can all enjoy it nonetheless and stay in if we choose doing the odd bit of tapesty, cross stitch, knitting or whatever takes our fancy. And we can drool over our seed catalogues if we're looking ahead to warmer months in the garden. And we can try out all the recipes that we never get round to when we're gadding about during the brighter months. And even put on dirty clothes to go out on walks, knowing we'll just get covered in mud.

I'll be using some of my January time sorting out the workshop, it's a task that's long overdue. Just before Christmas last year I started getting a bit twitchy, and needed to start changing things around. This happens at least once a year as I do enjoy seeing how things look in different parts of the workshop. Often a few small changes can lead to great benefits - maybe a better view, or the chance to have all related kit components in exactly the right place, or one of us not having to stretch up to a very high shelf for canvas or packaging labels (we are all shrimps).

Here's how one area was just before Christmas during stage one of the rejig:

Suffice to say, it doesn't look at all like that now. I'm much closer to planning the spaces that we need in both the packing areas, the 'showroom' (Harrods it most definitely is not!! Don't get your hopes up!) and even the much neglected office where Julie and I rub shoulders on Thursdays. More on the revamp in a later post, when I hope to do some 'before and after' pictures, it's all very exciting. I can't wait to order our new packing station, and some other shelving. Obviously I'll need to make sure that Flik can still reach his beloved bubblewrap, that's a priority.

The other thing I'm really looking forward to this month is more design time. The new designs are mounting up now. First to be ticked off the list will be 'G' from the A-Z Animals series as he/she is having lots of requests. 'B' should be soon after. When I say soon, remember it's all relative - everything takes longer than you think in the tapestry world.

Whatever you decide to do during January, I hope you'll enjoy it. And if you're hibernating like a little ('b' for) bear, I'll try to wake you up in February!

Wishing you a very Happy New Year

2011-12-29T14:25:00.001Z

Well, that's it for another year. In a few hours the postman comes to collect our last few sacks of post. I've done as much tidying as I can cope with in the workshop so it's nearly time to go home, light the fire and check the use by date on the sherry.

I probably won't be in a hurry to turn on any computers over the next few days, so if I haven't already wished you a Happy New Year via our Newsletter, I'd like to take this opportunity to do it.

Thank you once again for keeping us so busy. Look forward to your orders, emails, visits and phonecalls in the New Year.

Take care,

Kelly xx

Flik, destroying his special Christmas scarf

Jolly Christmas wishes!

2011-12-23T14:55:00.003Z

Hooray, we're nearly there! I hope you're enjoying the last few days before Christmas. Here in the workshop we're about to close the posting book and switch on the answerphone as we head off home to carry on with our Christmas preparations.

Before we go I want to thank you for all of your orders, your calls, your emails and your visits to our workshop which have kept us busy all year. It's time to raise a glass and wish you a very Happy Christmas.

There just time for a festive feast of some of wonderful Christmas stockings you've sent in this year. How exciting to think of them all being filled tomorrow.

Ready for the stretching boards - 'Maya' Angels, two Fairytale stockings and a Christmas Alphabet. You don't always have to put a name in the name panel if you don't want to, a row of stars looks just fine:

Lovely Puppies! 'Millie' was one of the first of our new Puppies stockings we received for our making up service:

As our November making up deadline approaches the postman brings in wonderful collections of stockings:

Yup, quite a few collections!

'Peter' Christmas Alphabet and 'Lilly' Angels. Bright pink has been a popular lining choice for stockings this year, as has yellow. We'll come to that in a minute!

Another 'Puppies' stocking, made up with purple velvet and looking suitably regal. 'Cerys' Noah's Christmas is made up in a buttercup yellow, illustrating perfectly that you don't have to stick to Christmas colours if you'd prefer not to:

Wonderful! And all heading back in plenty of time:

'Fleur' and 'Camille' in the yellow lining I mentioned earlier:

Seeing double! Two 'Henry' Faiytale Stockings, which both arrived on the same day:

'Malcolm', another Puppies Christmas stocking, using the navy blue for the name. Bright red tends to be the most popular lining colour, we buy it up in bulk every year before the rush starts!

Last, but not least... the empty 'Monty'. Not long now until...the Full Monty. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Have a fantastic Christmas. Wrap up warm, and happy stitching.

Kelly xx

The last Noel

2011-12-21T12:49:00.002Z

Early in December one of our local customers brought in her 'Seaside Sampler' tapestry for making up, genuinely unaware that we'd even had a making up deadline for tapestries. I looked at the pile of tapestries yet to go out to Sue and Sarah for making up and told her that her cushion probably wouldn't be ready for Christmas. She said it wasn't be a problem, and that she knew we'd do our best. She chose her fabrics and took 'Teddy's Garden' away to stitch as her next project.

After she left I kept telling myself that it would be fine if it wasn't done for Christmas, but something was bugging me. The name on the tapestry was 'Noel'.

Of course she wanted it back for Christmas, it was clearly a present for a grandchild with a Christmas birthday. The heart strings were being pulled again and I trudged off to heave another stretching board on to the table, and get a few towels ready. No point putting off the inevitable! The whole process was going to be tight as I had already promised my beloved cushion ladies that I wouldn't bother them after 15th December, so Noel would have to be stretched & dried and completely made up and returned to me in about 9 days.

Amazingly, it all went to plan largely because of the mild weather we've been having which has meant that the tapestries don't need as many days to dry after their stretching.

Here's Noel, made up beautifully with a navy border, bright red piping and cornflower blue backing:

It did look fabulous when it was made up, and is is so often the case I was reluctant to part with it. Seaside offers a lot of scope for making up, it can be made up very simply in one colour, or you can choose a contrast piping and backing, or push the boat out (ho ho!) and go for the three colour option as Mrs Davison did with Noel.

Mrs D was very pleased to pick up her tapestry before Christmas, I suspect she knew all the way along that we'd get it done on time. When she came to pick her Seaside Sampler up she also dropped off her completed Teddy's Garden - stitched in record time! But no, we won't get that one back for New Year. Teddy can hibernate for a few weeks and then we'll sort him out.

Every shelf has a folded lining

2011-12-20T15:00:00.001Z

So we're nearly there, how fantastic! All our last minute first class orders are about to be picked up so it's time to turn our attention to the organised chaos that is our workshop.

Beth has done a wonderful job of sorting out the fabrics and zips. They might be moving to a different part of the workshop and it's so much easier if everything's tidy. In the New Year I'm planning a major revamp to make way for new kits and new threads, and a new packing station from my favourite shelving suppliers, BigDug. That'll help so much with the increasing numbers of cushions and frames we're sending out each week.

For now, all is calm. Lovely!

Starter kit frenzy

2011-12-19T12:59:00.000Z

December has been a very busy month for us, as you'd expect. But this year is different to previous years in that people and shops seem to be leaving it later than usual to order. Last weekend saw a crazy few days for online ordering, and a flurry of trade orders too including one from John Lewis. Clearly they too are expecting shoppers to be shopping very close to the 25th, so if you're heading out to your local department store go early to get a place in the car park, it might be a bit hectic!

We try to keep good stock of all of our kits so can respond quite quickly to orders. We have been slightly caught out by the popularity of our starter kits and I found myself once again pleading with our printer to do us another batch, very soon after receiving other designs from him. There are times when it pays to grovel a bit, and this was one such occasion.

The canvases arrived several days later when I was on my own in the workshop, so guess whose job it was to take them home and fold them? Well, what else would I be doing!

Here they are, folded and ready for packing. It's so much easier to pack the kits if the canvases don't bounce all over the place!

And with their wool: Quilt Hearts, Butterfly Garden and Bubblegum Heart:

The last few days of last week and a lot of the weekend was been spent packing the starter kits. We have been surrounded by boxes of part-finished, then half-finished then suddenly finished and ready to go kits!

Today, they're on their way.

Once again there's a bit of space in the post room, just as well because orders are now coming in for the New Year. We'll soon be starting the whole process all over again...

Jack be quick!

2011-12-18T13:15:00.002Z

Tomorrow morning there will be a major celebration in the workshop, as we send out the last cushions of the year from our making up service. Sue and Sarah have worked really hard to ensure that we get all the tapestries back in time for Christmas. I won't go into the numbers or I'll start to feel faint, but there have been a lot, more this year than ever before.

Quite a few arrived very late for the end of October deadline. I'm not sure whether I should do away with the deadline or try to be stricter about it. Somehow I think the results will be the same either way. Never mind though, another year of happy customers and that's the main thing.

Here's a late arrival that we really did have to get back for Christmas. The tapestry is 'J for Jungle' from our A-Z Animals series. It came with a delicious incentive to help us along:

Here's Jack, all stretched and made up. The creamy border picks out the background colour of the lattering panel, and the red in the border is a great contrast. Please note, I've avoided any cringey Jack-in-the-box jokes.

A very big thank you to everyone who has sent their tapestries in to us this year for making up. Last week we had some more in, but we've put them away safely for now and they'll be first on the list for the New Year.

In the meantime, if you're stitching over the Christmas break do let us know if you need any fabric samples and we'll send some out to you.

Wrap up warm, and happy stitching! x

Love and peace in the wool room

2011-12-07T14:55:00.003Z

Today is a big day on our workshop calendar, as we've just emailed our last wool order of 2011. Next week the wool people turn off their machines, get used to the silence of no chugging and whirring and start their annual stock take. From the middle of next week, no wool will be sent out until January.

Every year I get cross about this situation, as the idea of stopping production right in the middle of the busy tapestry season really is daft. My blood pressure started to rise a few weeks ago when I was reminded of this year's closure but soon I decided on a different approach which was quite simply to go with the flow...or non-flow if we're talking about the wool. If the wool people were going to insist on doing their stock take at a mad time of year, we would too. We did ours yesterday and actually it's been rather wonderful.

For one thing, the wool shelves would never normally look as tidy as this:

On Friday when the wool delivery comes, it will all look a bit more hectic. But for now (possibly one day only!) it's lovely, and very calm.

Don't take my word for it. What do you think Flik?

I hope he makes the most of it. Tomorrow will be a normal packing day, and Flik will resume his position as chief bubblewrap popper.

No Horrid Henrys Here!

2011-12-06T19:51:00.001Z

If you read last month's Peter Piper post, you'll know that we regularly receive tapestries for our making up service with the same names on. As well as two Peters, we've also also recently had a pair of wonderful 'Henry' Christmas stockings.

Here they are, freshly prised from their jiffy bags having both arrived on the same day:

My first concern when I opened the parcels was that even the name panels were each stitched with multi-coloured lettering. It could all go horribly wrong if we weren't careful. Just kidding there, we write up the details of each tapestry as we open it, and put the customer's name on each canvas so there won't be any embarrassing mistakes.

The finished stockings! One made up in green, the other in blue. Gorgeous - and you'll be pleased to know that each tapestry did match up to its requested colour of backing and lining.

Autumn leaves & borders

2011-11-30T10:36:00.002Z

There are many reasons for choosing to add a mitred border around your tapestry. It could be that the pattern is quite busy and you think an additional border around it will act as a frame, and you won't lose any of the design as the cushion curves round towards the piping. Or perhaps you just want your cushion to be a bit bigger, in which case an extra border is an instant way of adding the extra inch or two.

Autumn Leaves is one of our tapestry designs that seems to split people 50:50 in the border debate, although most people agree on the colour of fabric for making up and opt for the chestnut colour used in the design. Other options are a yellow ochre colour, a dark green - but you can choose any colour you like.

If you're undecided about whether or not to add a border around your Autumn Leaves, these pictures may help you to decide one way or the other.

The Autumn Leaves in the bottom picture has a 1" border around it, you don't have to end up with a massive cushion. In the one in the top picture you can see that you don't lose any of the design in the piping, so a border is in no way essential.

Whichever way you go, you'll have a lovely cushion that looks great all year round.

Happy stitching!

Countdown to Christmas

2011-11-27T18:44:00.005Z

Well, here we go! Only four weeks until Christmas, so the official countdown starts now. Here in the workshop, November is ending on a busy note, I'd be more than a little worried if it wasn't! Weather wise, the month has been so mild that it still feels more like early October, and I think we've barely even registered November coming...and now going. We're expecting an even busier few weeks ahead as we all slowly wake up to the reality that will be *December*! Yikes.

Here's an update on proceedings in the wool room. Last Monday was a crazy day. I discovered early on that it was 'Mega Monday', apparently the busiest day of the week for online ordering. That explains the activity in the workshop. By the end of the day we had a nice pile of post bags by the door, full of kits, frames, cushions and Christmas stockings. The most popular kits that day and during the weekend before were 'Arts and Crafts Tiles' and 'Angels' Stockings.

It's funny how a design's popularity goes in phases. Not so long ago I was thinking of discontinuing 'Angels', but now it's really popular. The same is true of 'Renaissance Cat', and now I can't imagine letting him go either.

Early in the week we were also packing trade orders, as shops need to have their kits stocked up for Christmas. Here we have some 'Pop Art Puppies' all bagged and barcoded, ready to be sent out:

At this time of year we have deliveries coming in every day - cushion pads, wool, zips, frames. You name it, there's always something. Flik enjoys greeting all the delivery folk, and distracting them in the hope that they'll stay and play with him.

Now huddle round, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. On Wednesday we had a long-awaited and long-overdue delivery of our big red rope-handled bags. I ordered them in June for delivery in early October. October came, I made calls to check on their progress. No problems. Then the day came that they were supposed to arrive and I just 'got a feeling', and called to check that all was okay. Then the bombshell: the bags were going to be delayed by four weeks. No reason was given, they'd just be late. I checked our stocks. At a quieter time of year we might have been okay but in autumn/winter no way! I immediately demanded that four boxes should be air freighted out to us to tide us over until the main shipment came. Our new catalogue had arrived, and we were getting lots of orders. It was time to panic.

As it happens, those four boxes of red bags saved us from disaster. On Wednesday when the bags finally arrived, having been picked out from hundreds of other shipments for a fortnight's stay in customs, our bag supplies were looking like this:

By the end of the day they were like this:

What a relief! Flik was in the workshop and reported for duty, keen to help put the bags away.

The delay in the bags' arrival messed up a lot of my plans for October and November. It put paid to a few mailings I had planned and has delayed this month's Newsletter - but it will go out soon, so watch out for it if you're on our email mailing list.

On the making up front, we've been busier than ever this year. We're always either stretching, making up or sending back customer cushions, stockings and teacosies. I mentioned recently that I've set targets to keep everything on track. I thought the stockings were all stretched the other day, then three more came. Watch out for news on Wednesday, I'll see if I have better luck with my next target!

Time to go home now, as a warm fire and a glass of wine are waiting for me. I'm working on next year's new cross stitch kits, Sunday evenings are perfect thinking and designing time.

If you're using your dark evenings to work on your tapestry or cross stitch I do hope it's going well. It's such a cosy, snuggly thing to be doing. And if you're thinking of starting one over Christmas, please don't leave it too late to order. Remember the post just before last Christmas? There wasn't any because of the snow and ice. Who knows what sort of December we're in for!

Wrap up warm, and happy stitching xx

The way to our heart

2011-11-24T15:38:00.004Z

If you read yesterday's 'Peter Piper' post, you'll know that the deadline for our Christmas making up service was roughly a month ago. I've been warning customers for ages, as I do every year. I always know that some tapestries will come in late, they're still arriving every day.

Today the postman delivered a rather odd looking box. What could be inside this mysterious package? It must be important, it was sent by Registered Post. Hmmm. I opened it expecting to find needle threaders or something. No threaders, but what a surprise - it was another stocking (definitely the last - please, really!!) with a very sweet note and a lovely box of chocolates.

The chocolates are in the cupboard, I'm saving them as a reward for when - if - we ever finish this year's stockings!

There's room in the cupboard for the Fruit and Nut too, as promised by yesterday's lady. Perhaps for January Weightwatchers membership might not be a bad idea.

Peter Piper picked a pair of...Christmas Stockings!

2011-11-23T16:38:00.002Z

What a crazy time of year! I thought I'd take a moment to grab a cup of coffee and fill you in on progress in the making up department. It's hectic. As soon as we think we're getting on top of the stretching, more tapestries arrive.

As we're way past our Christmas deadline now, each tapestry comes with its own plea, and usually an explanation and an apology for the late delivery. We've even had the obligatory cute baby picture to tug at our heart strings. And we're such softies, it all works!

On Monday we had a call from a very nice lady in London, letting me know that her tapestry was going to be "a bit late, there's about a week's more work to do on it". She had spoken to me a few times before so I knew her tapestry would be a late arrival but on Monday she made my day when asking what sort of chocolate we would like her to enclose with her tapestry. I replied that a bar of Fruit & Nut would be fantastic, we'd share it over a tea break. To which our caller, shocked, said that she wondered if we wanted Swiss or Belgian chocolate! I'm looking forward to her tapestry coming in now, she's already forgiven.

Yesterday - amazingly - we reached one of the targets I'd set which was to have all of the Christmas Stockings stretched early on in the week*. And so Saturday's arrivals 'Ava' and 'Ryan' found their way onto the streching board. That's it, all the stockings are stretched for this year! Sue and Sarah, our making up ladies each have a pile to make up. Sarah's got a batch of the smaller ones and Sue's got some of the bigger ones. I'm trying to play down how many there are whenever I see them!

Here are some recent pictures of stockings we've made up in our workshop.

First we have Meredith, showing that a long name can fit into the name panel. Frances stitched Meredith's lettering panel in the lavender colour and we matched close to that with the edging, and lined the stocking in purple. The stocking looks great, and the colours go to show that you don't always need to choose 'Christmas' colours.

What an assortment here! Elio and Summer are both made up in velvet, the others in cotton. Again a nice mix of colour choices and name lengths. Theodore managed to fit in very well in the Fairytale panel! At this point I'll quietly mention that we might have to charge a little bit extra for velvet soon as they are much trickier to make up, and the cotton velvet that we use is quite expensive.

And here, illustrating why we always need to keep meticulous records of customer tapestries - a pair of Peters!

As soon as we open each parcel, we record each customer name, the design name, name on panel, colour requirements, special instructions, etc. It takes ages but is vital when dealing with precious work.

Don't these look lovely!

And some more masterpieces...

And here's a close up of the Puppies Christmas stocking, showing that if you like you don't have to put a name along the top, you can leave it blank. Although it might lead to a fight about ownership of the contents on Christmas morning!

I do love the little corgi in the Puppies stocking. If you missed my earlier post about the stocking, you might not realise who the corgi is or quite how naughty he is. He is one of the Queen's corgis, and escaped from the Royal wedding on April 29th to go to panto rehearsal - which is where we caught him, and captured him in stitches! We won't tell, if you won't.

*Since I started writing this post at lunchtime we've had another call...another Christmas stocking...heartfelt plea. But there are only so many drying hours...

Ooh, tapestry bags. Lovely!

2011-11-18T10:18:00.004Z

We are always making up cushions, Christmas stockings and teacosies in our busy Somerset workshop. We are delighted, and more than a little excited, to be able to offer a making up service for tapestry bags too.

Shown below is Jolly Red's Alhambra Stars (find it in the Teacosies and small projects area of our website) made up in purple velvet:

Other velvet colours are raspberry red, bright red, prussian blue, bottle green and magenta. There are lots of lining colours, too many to list. We were thinking practically with ours and chose a navy lining. We made the strap about 13" long from top of bag to top of shoulder so it sits nicely under the arm. We put wadding between the fabric layers, front and back. We haven't put any kind of fastening at the top, because it doesn't seem necessary and looks nicer for not having one.

The bags work so well with the small tapestries - Indian Elephants would look great too. Do give us a call if you're thinking of having a larger tapestry made up into a bag, I'm sure we'll be able to do that too but will need to discuss fabric and maybe a border size too.

When we make customer bags up, we'll put a pocket inside the bag for keys and/or mobile phone. Again, if you have any special requests, please give us a call before sending your tapestry in.

Looking at our small projects, I wonder if there might even be some scope for our little A-Z Animal designs to be made up as bags. What a great present for someone with a baby, a glamorous personalised baby bag! Admittedly, you won't get everything you need in there, I'm not suggesting that. But what about when you just pop out to the shop, or round to see a neighbour - could you fit a single nappy, drink and a toy in there? I might have to try this idea out on my neighbours' twins, will let you know what Alice (their Mum) says. Already I'm itching to get an A-Z Anumals bag made up, maybe not in velvet though. What do you think?

There is something so lovely about tapestry bags. I've got an ancient Dahlia Regalia one which has become my trusty camera bag, and I wouldn't be without it. The bags do feel a bit special, and would make a great gift for a friend's birthday, or for a Christmas present.

On the other hand if you're a prolific stitcher, regularly stitching for friends and family then maybe, just this once you might actually stitch something and keep it for yourself. What a crazy thought!

Cupcakes, Christmas & chaos in the wool room

2011-11-11T14:41:00.005Z

Hello! I am still here, feeling a little guilty as I can't update our blog as often as I'd like to at the moment. Sitting down is something of a luxury at this time of year, as there is so much running around to do. All the stocks of everything need to be constantly checked and reordered. It's amazing how quickly the little things like needle threaders disappear, and then there are the sticky labels that go on our bags...and a hundred other things!

I'm very happy to report that we have been joined in the wool room by a wonderful new helper, Beth, who has already settled in very well. Soon she'll be automatically converting all colours that she sees into wool shade codes, and then she'll officially be 'one of us'!

Earlier this week I was feeling strangely calm and serene (probably Beth's influence), quite out of character and if you're thinking "I bet that didn't last for long" - you're right! Our canvas printing schedule was sorted out and achievable, the wool was ticking along nicely. Then two things happened...

First, we got a letter from our wool people, reminding us that as they stop wool production and get ready for their annual stock take on December 14th (??) we have to put our final order for wool for the rest of the year in by November 19th. I should be used to this situation, but every year I foolishly hope that the wool people, who I love dearly if we put aside this one failing, will question the reasoning behind shutting up shop in the middle of the busiest season. It's bonkers. And it's not as though the wool will start being sent out again in early January when they open for business again - far from it, that's when 'production will start.' So all those machines will need to be gently cranked up again and eased into production. All in the busiest time of the needlework year.

We carry good stocks of wool anyway, but later on today I'm expecting a very large wool delivery to arrive. I'll have to hope my guesswork involved in predicting quantities needed until mid January has been accurate.

The other thing that happened was that our favourite department store decided to put in a somewhat larger than usual order, with just over a week for us to put the whole thing together. Fortunately, we do like a challenge so I'm sure it'll be fine...somehow. Once we change the printing schedule, order masses more wool, count the barcodes, arrange overtime etc. Even Flik might have to help with this one!

On a brighter note, all of our kits are now up and running. We finally started sending out Strawberry Cupcake tapestry kits last week. I do love it, and I'm so glad you seem to like it too. It's very pink, but not all pink. Here are a few pictures from the wool room of our first batch:

On the making up front, we've had so many tapestries in this year. Quite a few arrived have after our deadline, as we knew they would. I suspect they haven't stopped yet either. Everything that we've received by today (11th Nov) should be back in plenty of time for Christmas, and we're prioritising the Christmas stockings, for obvious reasons.

Yesterday, having opened yet another batch of jiffy bags I set off to one of my favourite shops - Wickes - and bought an extra stretching board. On the way back home I stopped off at Sainsburys and snapped up nearly all of their Basics white bath towels, just the job for rolling damp tapestries in. There's no point buying expensive towels for canvas stretching. Primark used to sell a range which were ideal, but our Taunton branch doesn't have them any more.

We now have canvases stretching and drying above the kit shelves, the cushion pads, and the canvases. Anywhere that has a flat surface will find a stretching board placed on it before too long! Here are some Christmas stockings, before...

...and after!

And what of Flik while we're all so busy in the workshop? Well he's been mostly eating, sleeping and entertaining everyone with his favourite hobby, popping bubblewrap - circle by circle, very methodically. Bless him!

One for the boys! A super Seaside Sampler

2011-11-01T14:21:00.000Z

Having just written about tapestry samplers for girls, I thought you might like to see a fabulous Seaside Sampler tapestry with the name 'Albie' on it. Oddly, we rarely see an Alfie though I know of lots of real life Alfies.

As you can see, Albie's cushion was made up with the greyish-blue of the tapestry as a mitred edge, bright red for the piping then navy blue for backing.

You don't need me to tell you how good it looks, the proof's there - even with my photography!

Making a 'boyish' sampler more 'girlish'

2011-11-01T13:51:00.001Z

Sometimes a particular birth sampler takes your fancy and can't help but think that it seems as though it was designed to be stitched for a boy rather than a girl, but it's still the one you want to make - for a girl. You may already have a girl in mind that you want to stitch for, and it could also be that you're very excitedly stitching for a baby who's yet to make an appearance so you don't know yet whether you're stitching for a boy or a girl. (Let's hope the baby has a nice name, ie one that's not too long!)

In the Jolly Red tapestry range, 'Seaside' is one of the designs that could be described as looking quite boyish. But girls live by the sea too, and love going to the beach. There must be a way of making the design slightly feminine?

Here's a lovely Seaside Sampler that we had in recently. The customer had very skilfully put the name Amelia and her date of birth into the space provided. We use a kind of dusky pink in the beach hut on the right, so I suggested that we should use a colour close to that for the making up colour. She also wanted a 1" mitred border to act as a frame around the design.

Here's the finished tapestry, looking wonderful:

A close up:

Well, it's 0/10 for my photography. I photographed this cushion in the wool room under strip lighting. The border & backing colour in real life is a nice dusky pink, so worth considering as an option for any seaside-loving girls in your family.

Earlier in the year we had a Farmyard Sampler tapestry in to be made up for a girl called Rosa. Again, farms seem to be considered to be boy territory. Not so! Here's Rosa's Farmyard made up:

And how about a side view:

Here we used lilac cotton for the border, a soft red for the piping and a light blue for the backing. The finished cushion looked fantastic!

Before we go, a quick look at an Alphabet Ark with a girl's names, in this case India. India's cushion has purple piping and red backing. The contrast piping breaks up the red in the stitched border of the tapestry and the backing colour really well:

We have lots more pictures, so I'll try to update whenever I can.

Incidentally, we never get asked advice about making 'girlish' samplers more boyish, the boys seem to like the boy designs that we make already and don't want to venture into girl territory!

Making up fabrics in close up

2011-10-27T18:48:00.000+01:00

On page 11 of Kit Book 15 we give an idea of some of the fabrics we use in our making up service. The colurs shown are by no means all of the colours available so please do get in touch if you can't see one that appeals. The photographs in the Kit Book aren't exactly huge, so I thought it might be a good idea to show you larger versions.

Here goes, starting with the wool blend fabrics:

You get the idea of the texture of the fabrics, the weave works really well with whichever stitch you've used in your tapestry. I haven't shown the magenta, purple, mocha, other greens, bright yellow, lime green and one of my favourites - charcoal grey, which goes surprising well with lots of Jolly Red designs.

Next we have the lighter weight cotton fabrics. Ideal for smaller designs or delicate tapestries:

On my ancient computer they look the same as the first pictures, but they aren't - I promise! The overall feel is more subdued/pastelly - but not in a bad or boring way! They complement the colours of our A-Z Animals range of kits really well, and are also used a lot on Jolly Red starter kits. They are great to mix and match, using one colour for a mitred edging, another for piping and if you fancy it yet another for backing. Have fun, choose your own unique colour combination and get something special. We love to see customer ideas and it's a wonderful surprise when unusual colour combinations work out really well.

Not shown are the other beigey/taupes, grey, grey-green, other blues and yellows...probably more too. We stock the whole range.

Next we have the lining fabrics. Again, a small selection:

We also have yellow, bright pink and some more unusual colours too. Just ask if you need an idea of the other colours, but actually the ones shown above tend to do cover most people's needs pretty well as they are usually only used on the Christmas Stockings.

We try to keep a more subdued range in for the Chick Chick Chicken and Teatime Teacosies. More on their way soon.

We also stock a limited range of velvet fabrics in jewel colours - purple, bright red, raspberry red, a clarety colour, prussian blue, magenta and bottle green. Definitely no 'Granny's armchair' colours, all lovely and bright or rich and sumptuous. Picture to come soon.

The deadline is getting ever nearer, so if you're having a last-minute panic with your tapestry over the weekend I hope these pictures will help you to decide on the best fabric/s for your project.

Spotlight on Christmas Stockings. Making up deadline...

2011-10-17T14:17:00.002+01:00

Am I the only person who feels glad about the drop in temperature? And is it safe to put our summer clothes away yet?! This morning I actually felt as though the date and the weather matched up, it was a lovely surprise. Yes, it's a bit chilly but we are half way throught October.

As always, the seasonal signs are here to be seen in the workshop. We had a bumper wool order to unpack at the end of last week...I must confess that we left some of it until this morning, as we didn't want to spoil that Weekend Feeling last Friday. Lin suddenly remembered that she was going to watch her grandchildren swimming, and scarpered as soon as she could!

As well as wool for the kits, we've had a huge increase - thank you, thank you! - in the number of tapestries coming in for our making up service. There have of course been lots of Christmas Stockings:

The stockings often come with little stories attached, giving us an insight about how quickly (or not so!) they've been stitched and who they've been made for.

One customer alternates her tapestry projects and it's been fun watching the pattern of her stitching over the years. She makes a Camelcade, then a Christmas Stocking for a grandchild, then another Camelcade for another relative...or at least she did until her neighbours saw her stitching Christmas Stockings and started to drop heavy hints about how they'd quite like one for themselves. She's now having to stitch Stockings solidly, 'Melva' Angels stocking (above) being the latest!

There are still a few weeks until our deadline for Christmas making up, so I hope this nice autumnal weather will make you feel like staying in and finishing your needlepoint. We are bound to get some coming in after our deadline, we always do and as always will do our utmost to get yours back to you on time.

This year we have a cunning plan, which we have already started implementing. At the end of October we are going to pull all of the Christmas Stocking canvases out of the making up boxes and work solidly on them to get them stretched, dried and made up. It won't be completely straightforward as we're bound to run out of the occasional shade of lining fabric which we'll then have to wait for, or might need to contact customers to confirm colour choices, etc. But the idea is there - to get the stockings made up and back to their homes very early.

We've already heard warnings about a harsh winter to come, and I am dreading a repeat of the ice of last year. In what should have been our last week of posting, Royal Mail weren't collecting or delivering mail and we couldn't get in to the workshop. If our making up plan works, at least we'll be able to relax knowing that everyone - children and adults and maybe even pets - have already got their Stockings hanging up, ready for their special visitor on December 24th.

Wrap up warm, and happy stitching!

New designs, new kits, Newsletter

2011-10-13T18:47:00.002+01:00

Wow! What a week we've had - and I'm quite aware it hasn't finished yet. Tomorrow is going to be just as busy, with my final trip to the printer to finalise some last bits of packaging for our new kits.

If you haven't yet received your copy of Kit Book 15, I'm sure it will be with you very soon. We're going as fast as we can. In the meantime, I thought you might like to see all in one place some of our brand new needlepoint kits. First we have Cats and Dogs, a new Christmas Stocking kit to go alongside Angels, Fairytale and Christmas Alphabet:

Read more about Cats and Dogs here. It's a great design (apologies, I probably shouldn't say so myself!). When we have more time I'll tell you about our race to get it stitched on time having only intended to do Puppies for this year...and how we were so pushed for time that I ended up making loads of changes and stitching the whole stocking myself! Always the way...

Next, we have Arts and Crafts Tiles. This design has been admired by so many visitors to our workshop and I think it might find its way home with me. What do you think? I hope you like it too!

In real life, the central panel is more of a mellow terracotta than shown here, the whole design looks very warm and makes me start to look forward to cosy evenings in front of the fire. More information about Arts and Crafts Tiles here. Arts and Crafts was a mad panic too, and ended up being stitched by one of our lovely outworkers while she was on holiday. Quite a lot of it was done in the evening while she wearing one of those 'head lamps' as she was camping. What a star!

Next, and for something completely different, we have one for the girls - Strawberry Cupcake:

I've wanted to do a cupcake tapestry design for ages, but didn't want it to be only cakes. At the same time, I also wanted to include strawberries and hearts in a design together...and so Strawberry Cupcake evolved, after several false starts! I hope you like this one too, it's unashamedly pretty. I really like seeing a proper pink design in our kit collection, but as always there's a bit of balance so there are other colours too - very important in case one ever has second thoughts about having absolutely everything pink!

More about Strawberry Cupcake here.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing the new designs together rather than having to go from page to page on the website.

Watch out for our latest email Newsletter, that'll be coming soon. If you'd like to joing our mailing list, please get in touch (there's a link on the right).

Long name to fit in? One customer nails it!

2011-10-12T16:53:00.000+01:00

It can be a bit daunting trying to fit a long name into a name panel on a tapestry. We recently heard from a Jolly Red stitcher in Greece who was enjoying stitching Butterflies Sampler but needed to fit the name Cassandra (a very long, curvy name) in to the name panel on Butterflies. Fortunately most names we see on birth samplers are short - as was our Greek customer's first tapestry Alphabet Ark (below) with the name India on it:

No problem there then. Unfortunately, Cassandra wasn't going to be so easy to fit on to her next tapestry, Butterflies Sampler. She had a go on the squared paper we provide with the birth sampler kits, then as it wasn't working out someone else offered to help by writing it out on the canvas.

The next thing I knew, our Greek lady was on the phone explaining that the writing on canvas exercise hadn't quite gone to plan. For one thing, the name still didn't fit and for another - prepare yourself, you won't like this - the pen had run. The customer had now washed the tapestry and was satisfied that all the colour was out, but now she was presented with a new problem: during the washing process, the canvas in the middle of the tapestry had become very soft and unworkable. She didn't know what to do. We agreed to try to think of a solution and in the meantime sent out a smaller alphabet so that Cassandra would fit in to the Butterflies name panel.

About a week later we had a very happy lady on the phone, reporting that Cassandra had fit in using our smaller chart, and she was able to add a date of birth too. And as for the canvas, she'd brushed it with a layer of clear nail varnish. Genius!! It helped to toughen up the canvas for stitching, and sealed the panel so the ink from the pen definitely wouldn't run any more.

The finished canvas duly arrived for our needlepoint making up service, and I can report that all was well. Here's the finished cushion:

Smudge-free name panel:

And the side view, we used a lovely blue similar to the blue below the name panel itself:

All's well that ends well! A top tapestry tip - you heard it here first!

Kit Book 15, coming your way

2011-10-06T13:42:00.002+01:00

We've finally taken delivery of Kit Book 15, and have started posting a copy out to everyone on our mailing list. It will take a few weeks, so please be patient. We don't do it in alphabetical order so don't be overly concerned if your name's in the second half of the alphabet!

This year I've only put our Jolly Red tapestry designs in the catalogue. It doesn't mean that our cross stitch designs are disappearing, only that I haven't had time to do any more. There are lots of new tapestry designs, and I think this is one of our nicest catalogues ever. So far the feedback has been great - thank you!

There were issues with space, and it was tricky trying to fit everything in but I really wanted to have a dinky catalogue this year. A few designs - one customer has noticed the absence of Autumn Leaves - didn't make it to the pages of the catalogue. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, only that we ran out of space!

I'd better get back to putting address labels on Kit Books! Looking forward to hearing your comments when you get yours...

Macmillan Boot Camp Day. All the pictures!

2011-10-03T09:23:00.003+01:00

Time for an update from the workshop, and more pictures from our Macmillan Boot Camp on Friday. We were so lucky with the weather last week, I would never for a moment have imagined that on the last day of September we'd be stitching with the doors open, enjoying some very welcome sunshine. It really did feel like the middle of summer rather than the beginning of autumn. My advance planning for the day had included finding places to put everyone's umbrellas and coats, I was convinced it was going to be pouring with rain on our long-awaited Boot Camp day.

Enjoy the pictures, mostly taken by Lin who is rapidly becoming Jolly Red's 'inworkshop' photographer.

Clip frames set up, ready for some stitching. All is calm!

Lydia, the 'kitchen wench', in the kitchen (where else?!)

and Lin, coffee lady & handy left handed tapestry advisor

We're off! We ran four hour long classes, with an hour's gap between each so that we could get ourselves organised for the next session.

A surprise delivery - red roses from mrjollyred, fresh from Cottage Flowers in Ilminster. I wasn't expecting flowers, so as we were vaseless they had to go in the jolly red mop bucket. In spite of the inappropriate container, they still looked fantastic! *blush*

We had so many cakes. Thank you to Lin, Lydia, Lucy and Gina for helping out - much appreciated, not just by me but by all our ladies too. We were also very lucky to have a smart tapestry frame and an unused 'Hens Sweet Hens' tapestry kit to raffle off. They were donated by Jill, an Isle Brewers customer who hasn't picked up a frame for years and decided that it and her kit would be happier somewhere else. We sold tickets for £1 each, raising an extra £32 for the day. At the end of the day Kath Crouch's daughter Georgie did the draw and the kit and frame went to Delia - another Isle Brewers lady, and Jill's neighbour.

Business as usual, and the day's post still needed to be collected. After his initial shock, postie was quite relaxed and happy to have his photograph taken.

More stitchy pics. It is amazing how much you can cover in an hour, everyone really knuckled down and produced some great work. Some people had never done any tapestry before, others wanted to know if they were doing the right stitch or if they could improve their way of working. Everyone got to try out a 12" clip frame to see whether they were in the 'Love 'em' or 'Loathe 'em' frames camp. I think most people loved 'em!

One person was notable by his absence on the day - Flik! As he gets older, he seems to be becoming even greedier than usual and I didn't want him to be drooling at people while they tucked in to their cake. So I decided it would be better all round if he stayed with friends for the day. I did take a picture of him the day before though. I was racing around the workshop, and he was, well...not racing much at all.

The day was such great fun, and we raised over £400 for Macmillan. Three people couldn't come on the day and are very kindly still going to send in a contribution so I'm not sure of the exact total yet - I'll let you know as soon as I do. There was such a wonderful atmosphere throughout the day, it was great to be having such an indulgent time for a very good cause. Thank you to everyone who came on the day - 31 people to our remote Somerset workshop, I think that's fabulous! And thank you to Macmillan for providing the incentive I needed to run the Boot Camp, and for sending stickers and balloons and all sorts of tips to make the day a success.

I enjoyed meeting new Jolly Redders, and catching up with those I already knew, some of whom I hadn't seen for years. We will definitely be doing another Boot Camp for Macmillan, and won't wait until September next year to do it. Please do email kelly@jollyred.co.uk if you'd like to come along, and we'll add your name to the waiting list. Let's hope we get the same weather again!

Update 13th October. Total raised on the day was £444.50 once we include the Gift Aid form. Since then, we've had another very generous £15.00 from two ladies who couldn't come on the day. It's in the Macmillan pot, I'll send it on the next time we do a Boot Camp, unless I can think of another fundraising event before then. Thank you all!

Tapestry Boot Camp for Macmillan !!!

2011-09-30T11:42:00.003+01:00

At last the day has arrived, the workshop's looking fab and has been buzzing with happy ladies stitching their tapestries. Here's a pic, the first of many.

Now setting up for our next group, really glad we've got an hour in between. More ladies just arrived - see you later!

More on the Boot Camp in the next post 'Stitching, Smiles & A Nice Surprise.'

From starter kit to fab wedding gift

2011-09-28T12:01:00.000+01:00

Stitching something for a wedding presents its own particular problems. It's one of those occasions where you can hardly check with the recipients to see if they're going to be happy with your gift idea, it might just spoil the surprise. And so you think about it, and think some more. You don't want to make something too big...it has to go with things the couple already has...etc etc. If it's any help, I'd say that if you've got an idea and think that the happy couple will like it, then just go with your insincts. Get stuck in and start stitching!

In the summer we had a gorgeous Quilt Hearts tapestry from a customer who had done just that. When you look at it the tapestry (below), bear in mind that this fabulous creation has been made from a small starter kit containing only 8 skeins of wool. They really do go a long way.

I think it's wonderful, far superior to my own 'Best Mum' effort a little while back. I really admire the planning that went in to this tapestry to create a very special wedding present. The bride and groom's names are there, as is the date for the big day. The couple's initials are in the corners too. Everything's there, it's brilliant! I hope this inspires you if you're stuck for an idea for something to make for a wedding present. It ticks all the boxes - not too big, eyecatching yet not too obtrusive. And made from a kit that costs £16 so easy on the purse too. People always appreciate something handmade, and I'm sure Kate and Budgie were delighted with their cushion.

Here is the whole picture of the cushion made up, with a 'soft navy' border and red piping:

We used navy for the backing as well. Small tapestries look great framed too, so if you're considering this option kep an eye open for square box frames as they'd be ideal.

Here's a pic of what you get in a kit, there's everything to get you started and on the way to creating your own piece of wedding wizardry!

Four days until our Macmillan Tapestry Boot Camp

2011-09-26T16:37:00.001+01:00

Well, suddenly there are only four days to go until our long-awaited Tapestry Boot Camp. All four sessions are now full, in a pleasant but not 'to bursting' kind of a way. We have 29 people coming to Jolly Red's hideaway workshop for the one hour tapestry lessons on Friday 30th September. I have been overwhelmed by the response, as initially I suggested four sessions imagining that only two would actually happen. We are in an out of the way location, after all. As it happens, people are coming from miles around - thank you to everyone for booking.

It's going to be such a fantastic day. There will be lots of coffee, nice teas for tea drinkers, lovely cakes and friendly banter while Flik and I talk a little about the basics of needlepoint and get everyone threading needles and starting off on their own little tapestry sample.

When I arrived at to the workshop today there was an answerphone message from someone asking to come to the next one as she was unable to make the 30th. If you'd like your name to be added to the list for the next Boot Camps please do email me at kelly@jollyred.co.uk.

I'll let you know how it goes, but I've got a feeling I might not be up to blogging over the weekend - it'll have to be next week. I promise I'll tweet inbetween sessions to keep you updated.

Camels, pups and some tidying up

2011-09-19T14:53:00.001+01:00

It's getting cooler outside which to us means one thing - things are hotting up in the workshop! As soon as the children go back to school we get an increase in the number of tapestries arriving each week for our making up service. There have been some lovely ones, here is a small selection, starting with Camelcade:

We usually make Camelcade up in a colour that matches the colour of the camel in the front, or a pale terracotta, or even a red. However, when Jacqueline came in she knew immediately that she wanted the purply colour for her cushion. I'm glad she chose that, it looked fantastic so now I know I can recomend it to other customers. Here's the side view, it might look a bit dark but you get the idea:

One customer sent in Alhambra Stars and Pop Art Puppies to be made into specs cases. Here they are, looking lovely:

We make the specs cases up with lining fabric and add a layer of wadding between the tapestry and the lining fabric. We stitch everything together using a shade of wool to co-ordinate with the lining. The customer rang the day after we sent out her specs cases to say that she was delighted with them. They will make wonderful presents.

Finally, I must say a special 'Congratulations' to Diana for stitching up her third pair of wedding kneelers. That's it, I've got to do another wedding design now, I promised I would. Do remind me, early next year would be a good time. I won't put a picture of Diana's latest tapestries up until after the wedding as I wouldn't like the bride and groom, or any of their families or friends to see them before the big day. It would spoil the surprise. Watch out though, pics coming as soon as I can! Here's one of Diana's earlier pair of kneelers. They are absolutely beautiful when made up, really solid.

We also get lots of fabric requests before customers send in their tapestries to us. If you think you need some, decide whether you'd like wool blend - heavyish, good for cushions, or cotton - a sort of brushed cotton. Jacqueline's Camelcade was made in the wool blend, you can get an idea of look of the fabric in the side view of the cushion. Diana's Congratulations kneelers were made in red cotton, with hessian underneath.

The selecting of the samples is my job and sometimes there are LOADS to send out. I'm pretty good about keeping worktops clear in most areas of the workshop - but alas, not the fabric off-cut bits. I kid myself that it's okay to be untidy here because I can at least access all the fabric off-cuts quickly. It's nonsense, of course and it has started to bug me. So on Sunday I took the brave step of coming in to tidy it up. What a difference! It's gone from this:

picture shrunk in shame

...to this:

Now we have the cottons in the top crate, wool blends in the bottom crate. And I'm going to keep them that way. We do have a small range of cotton velvet too, only strong colours - no 'granny's armchair' shades. The bin liner shows how many unuseable off-cuts I'd accumulated over recent months. Shocking! Now all I need is another trip to Dunelm Mill to buy more crates, I've got the tidying bug!

Lilac whine

2011-09-19T13:42:00.002+01:00

Tissues at the ready, today's post is a salutary tale about not taking things for granted. Not that I thought I did, but we'll gloss over that minor detail. For many years - since the end of the last century to give you an idea of how long ago we're talking - I have been ordering one of our main ranges of backing fabrics for our making up service from a wonderful company, and have established a pretty good relationship with them. Put it this way, they never have to ask who I am when I call, they know my voice so well. Perhaps I sound more Wurzelish than I realise, that might be it.

Because of the nature of Jolly Red's needlepoint designs with lots of birth samplers and cheerful designs, we tend to use a fair few bright backing fabrics. One of them is a beautiful lavender colour. As an old lady I call it lilac, but I'm reliably informed that lavender is the new word for lilac. Here it is, think Parma Violets and you're in the right area:

So, for over ten years I've been regularly calling up the fabric people and ordering several metres of this colour each time, along with whatever else we need. It's such a great colour - it's not quite purple, and it is a good girlie colour to use for designs that have a lot of pink in them, to avoid overdoing it on the pink front.

Last month when I called with my usual order, I was shocked to hear that the colour is no longer available, it has been discontinued. No warning, nothing - it's just gone. It is now an ex colour. I had no idea that the colour was on its way out, but sadly it's a sign of the times. Everyone is streamlining their own particular business operations, so the fabric people are in no way unusual.

After I found out about the lack of lovely lilac, I was in shock, and went round the workshop in a daze for ages. One of our new designs (still secret!) has been made up in that colour, the cushion has been photographed and the packaging has been done for it.

The only thing I can do is to have a run of the colour specially made, but that means 300 metres, 6 rolls x 50m. It'll cost a fortune, and is too hefty an outlay with new designs and a catalogue to sort out so I can't even consider it yet. The really sad thing that I have just discovered is that a few more of our beloved colours are for the chop. I'll keep you posted, and wherever possible I'll buy up all the remaining stock.

It's not all doom and gloom, other purply shades are available and we stock a good range in our cottons - and a rather wonderful purple velvet too. Once our new catalogue is ready I'll do a separate blog post, linking it back to the making up service page at http://www.jollyred.co.uk/ so you get a good idea of what we have. Which realistically speaking is most colours, I was just rather attached to this particular one.

Small things, bright & beautiful

2011-09-10T14:52:00.001+01:00

The days are racing ahead now. We can't really pretend it's the tail end of summer now, autumn really is here. Not that I mind, I'm all for cosiness and warm layers any day. And the first day we light the fire will be a very happy one in the Jolly Red household!

Day by day we edge a little bit closer to completing our new catalogue, the trouble is that there are always last minute changes to do. There's always more photography needed, and tweaks to make here and there. But we are getting there - just slowly, Somerset speed if you like.

On the kit front we have been very busy since mid August, and in recent weeks have started supplying our kits to several new retailers, all very exciting stuff. All that activity combined means a lot more packing to do in the wool room, more frequent wool orders, more time spent posting and sending out fabric samples - but definitely less time for blogging. I'm going to try to do at least one update a week, and once the catalogue's out I'll be able to share stories of some of our new designs and their adventures.

In the meantime, I think it's a while since I've shown you some wonders from the wool room, customer tapestries that we've made up. Put the kettle on, and enjoy!

Gorgeous Pop Art Puppies, with bright blue border, lavender piping - but what colour backing? Let's see:

Red. Lovely!

And here's another Pop Art Puppies, given quite different treatment, this time a pale yellow border and backing, with red piping:

Sometimes you might not want to add a border around a small tapestry. One customer sent in a Home Sweet Home tapestry which she didn't want any bigger than its natural finished size (approx 7" x 7"), as it was going to live among her doll collection. I do enjoy these insights into our customers' lives!

Here's Home Sweet Home, made up in red velvet. Same for piping and backing:

Meanwhile, Joshie's Mum (see earlier posting 'Joshie and the Bears') has been busy again, this time with Farmer Bear. I think this tapestry is superb, and it's reminded me that if you are going to extend one of the starter tapestry kits you don't need to add something different. You can work with what's already there in the design, just don't stop when you reach the borders.

Finally, here's a wonderful Elephant, given the three colour treatment:

Side view:

Red again, fab!

That's all for now, more to come but I think I'd better get back to those tweaks or we'll never have a new catalogue.

Happy stitching, and wherever you are I hope you're enjoying the colours and moods of the changing seasons.

Visiting our Somerset workshop

2011-09-06T09:03:00.000+01:00

It would appear that the autumn visiting season is underway! It's only Tuesday and so far this week four separate lots of visitors have arranged to come and see us. The calendar will soon start to fill up with little 'V's, indicating Visitors, an important code to remind us to try to keep a bit of space clear on the floor so that people can actually walk in the workshop without falling over boxes, or into the dog's bed.

If you feel like visiting our secret hideaway home, please do give us a quick call in advance on 01460 281111. If you need to plan your journey and have one of those new-fangled Satnav thingummies, our postcode is TA3 6QL. Your Satnav will take you as far as the bank of willow trees at the end of our lane, you need to go down the lane until you come to a group of four workshops. Jolly Red's is the big one at the back facing the road. There's plenty of parking outside. Access to the workshop is up two steps.

Come in and see us if you want to choose fabric to have your latest tapestry made up, or if you need to pick up your next project - or even if you're just curious about what goes on in the workshop.

At this time of year we tend to work quite long hours, so are often here well into the evenings and on Saturdays too. We look forward to seeing you, and will make sure that Flik promises to be on his best behaviour!

Finding a framer for your tapestry

2011-09-02T12:52:00.001+01:00

Sometimes you don't want to get your finished needlework made into a cushion, you'd rather have it framed. In recent weeks we've had a few calls from customers who have had problems getting a framer to frame their tapestries for them. One stitcher, Karen, stitched Congratulations and took it to her local framer. He glanced at the work she'd spent weeks stitching for a wedding present for her sister and said: "I can't do it as it is. If you add three extra stitched rows around it, I'll be able to." She stitched the three extra rows, took it back to the picture framer who then said he couldn't do it because it 'wasn't completely square'. How frustrating!

Karen was distraught. The clock was ticking and the picture was needed within the next week, she'd explained the deadline in her initial meeting with her framer. As the framer was a friend of a friend so she thought he would have said upfront if there was likely to be a problem with either doing the job or meeting the deadline. At the outset she would even have been happy with him saying what he probably should have said, which is: "I'm sorry, but I'm not really familiar with framing needlework. You might be better off somewhere else."

This morning another customer called saying that her local picture framer couldn't do her tapestry as it was too far out of shape. Again, the problem is not with the tapestry - it's the framer! Tapestries do go out of shape, that's fine and they can be sorted out. But if a framer isn't used to dealing with tapestries, he/she won't know how to stretch them.

There are some very good needlework framers out there, you just need to seek them out. If you get stuck, I can recommend a few. As a rule you should choose someone who doesn't look frightened - or snooty - at the sight of some needlework being presented to him/her. Let's say 'him' for now...he shouldn't ask you to do extra rows around your tapestry and he will be able to stretch your canvas back in to shape if it's gone a bit out - and he won't whack a load of adhesives on the back of your tapestry either.

There is a happy ending to Karen's story. We suggested that she should try Framer Giles in Hambridge, but he was on holiday. In the end her tapestry was framed beautifully for her by Martock Picture Framers in Somerset. They understood the urgency of the job, treated Karen's work with respect - and did the whole job in three days. Karen, and her sister Tracy who she stitched the tapestry for, were delighted with both the finished framed tapestry and the service. Credit where credit's due!

Pining, Designing and a Wower Flower

2011-08-25T15:13:00.006+01:00

One of the highlights in the workshop last week was the arrival of a batch of canvases for our latest new design, one I'm really quite pleased with - Magic Flowers. If you've been a Jolly Redder for a while you might remember our old friend Dahlia Regalia which we stitched using soft cotton, or 'posh string' as I used to describe it on the phone to people. Dahlia never took off in the way that I thought it should have, and it's bothered me for years. Okay, it still does. I didn't want it to just slip away into the depths of Jolly Red's back catalogue as I really liked the design. I mean, it could go anywhere, it was flowery but not too cutesy. What's not to like? In the back of my mind all these years later has been the niggling thought that Dahlia needed to be brought back to life in some way.

I used bright colours in Dahlia Regalia, with flowers set within circles set within squares. The design idea, minus the flowers, led to the design for Magic Circles in 2005. Here's Magic Circles:

Magic Circles was a success right from the very start, and I decided to build on that and bring back the essence of Dahlia Regalia but in a way that would tie it in with Magic Circles. So, here (drum roll please) we have Magic Flowers:

I hope you like it. The leafy border is lovely, and the colours are spot on in the quietly bright department. No two flowers are the same, and the circles are a bit wonky so you can relax while you're stitching. If two people stitched Magic Flowers at the same time they'd each end up with completely different looking tapestries at the end, and that's the whole point. You're making your very own Magic Flowers.

If you've stitched Magic Circles already, I'm sure you'll be pleased with Magic Flowers too. As with our Old English Cockerel and Old English Hen, they 'go together, but not in a spooky way'.

We all know that needlepoint design is not the fastest medium to work in. I stitched up the first colour sample of Magic Flowers last summer and the kit has taken nearly a year to get to production!

How's that for wonky flowers? In the sample above I was trying out various wool colours. Because I didn't want Magic Flowers to exactly match Magic Circles I didn't let myself look at the wool colours for the kit, so started again aiming for a 'quietly bright' mix of colours. I do hope you like it, here it is on the website.

You may have noticed that I've been trying out how to do links in the proper places in this post? Please bear with me if they haven't worked! I'm forcing my head out of the sand and very slowly getting there with all of this technology. But it is all way beyond my comfort zone of graph paper, wool and trusty old 'squaring it up for stitching' programme.

And because I know you want to see it, here's the original Dahlia Regalia:

Let me know if you like Dahlia too, and I'll put it on the list for a future canvas reprint. Sadly, I can't see it ever existing as a kit again. That posh string is too hard to come by, ruinously expensive...and anyway, not enough people liked it last time. Then again, maybe it would work in wool - should I give it a go? Mmm...

Catalogue, shops & a lazy pup

2011-08-24T16:12:00.000+01:00

The Bank Holiday is just around the corner now, symbolising for many of us the end of summer. I know you don't want to hear it, but it's true, sorry to point it out. This time last year the Bank Holiday was very relaxed, the annual 'calm before the storm' as I mentally prepared for the traditional upsurge in orders once the children go back to school.

Not so this year. It is manic! Don't for a minute think I'm complaining, and a very big thank you to everyone for keeping us so busy. The shops that we supply with kits are stocking up for autumn, and we're busy with orders from the website too. Christmas stocking kits are going out every day, and our starter kits are disappearing at an it-must-be-school-holidays rate!

Here's a recent picture of Flik, coping with the stress:

Attaboy Flik! Behind the scenes and not that Flik would notice it, we're working away on Kit Book 15. I'm so glad we don't bring a new catalogue out every year, I couldn't cope with the stress if we did it more frequently. The fact is that needlepoint designs take a little while to stitch, especially the first ones as once they're done they need to be lived with for a while before changes & improvements are made, so we'd hardly have anything to show for a year's work anyway. Bearing in mind how quickly a year goes, I think 'two years' might be the new 'one year'. You heard it here first!

We'll be putting another newsletter together very soon, so don't forget to send us your email address if you'd like to be on our mailing list. We send out fairly regular newsletters, but we don't bombard you - and we certainly don't pass your details on to anyone else.

Back to the wool room now for me, and later on I've got to open the jiffy bags that have come in this week with customer treasures for our making up service. One, a lovely Butterflies Sampler, has come all the way from Greece. I'm very proud that our making up service is now international - though I can never quite relax until customers at the other end let me know that their tapestries have arrived safely!

Enjoy the sun, the rain, whatever comes your way. At least it isn't properly cold yet!

Tapestry frames - 18" or 24"?

2011-08-23T12:02:00.004+01:00

Here's the dilemma: you've chosen a tapestry to stitch and the design measures about 12" wide. You've looked at our website, decided you'd like to order a frame and need to know if you can manage on an 18" tapestry frame. Perhaps you're going on holiday and are concerned about your luggage allowance, or are concerned that a 24" frame might feel a little cumbersome for a medium-sized design.

I get asked about frame dimensions and which designs fit on to which frames quite a lot so thought it might be an idea to get a few canvases out and take some pictures for you. Here we go:

The picture shows Pop Art Puppies and Jolly Hearts against a CF189 18" frame. If you were to keep the Jolly Hearts canvas whole while you stitch it would be a squeeze with an 18" frame, but if you cut along the dotted line in the colour blocks the canvas will comfortably fit onto an 18" frame.

In our picture we've used a clip frame. They are very popular at the moment, and I'm not surprised! You can get started on one tapestry and take it off the frame in a matter of seconds if you need the frame for another project. Then it's just a matter of clip clip off, then clip clip on when you want to pick up and finish off your first project.

Here's Patchwork Cat, pictured with a 24" clip frame (CF249):

The code CF249 indicates width of frame of 24" and height (external measurement) of 9". If you would like to see more of a large canvas when you're stitching, please choose CF2412 from our tapestry frames page at http://www.jollyred.co.uk/, that will do the job.

Incidentally, there is no way you can get one of our bigger 16" needlepoint designs on to an 18" frame so please don't try, you will only be disappointed!

I hope this helps if you weren't sure about which frame to go for. You can apply the principles to other designs in the Jolly Red range. One thing to bear in mind though - if you're starting with a medium sized design like Jolly Hearts but might want to go on to larger designs at a later date, then order a CF249 24" frame if you don't want to make another purchase at a later date. A CF249 24" frame should cover you for any of our kits!

Classes, coffee & cake.

2011-08-14T13:28:00.005+01:00

Time for an update on the 1hr tapestry classes. We've had a very positive response to our Tapestry Boot Camp for Macmillan Cancer Support, with visitors to our workshop scribbling the date in their diaries. So far we haven't been firming up exactly which classes people will be coming to. It's that relaxed Somerset thing, but I think we'd better sort out the details soon.

If you're on our mailing list, I'll send an email out this week with a booking form, but please do feel free to call on 01460 281111 to book a place if you don't want to wait for an email. The day will be great fun. We will of course be providing coffee and cake on the day - indeed one local lady is coming only for the coffee and cake! I know that some of you might like to come but can't make it on the Friday, so we will organise some Saturday sessions as well if necessary. Thanks so much for all the interest so far.

This morning I've tried to put details on Macmillan's website but as usual have tripped up at the technology hurdle. Details will be up soon, I promise. Here's the picture I hope to use to promote our event...if I can sort it out!

Cute eh! Hoping to get it all sorted out tomorrow.

Enjoy your Sunday, whatever you're doing. Finishing off a tapestry? Fantastic! Please do send it in ASAP, you know you'll earn lots of gold stars. We're getting quite a few calls for fabric samples so I know we'll have lots of tapestries on the way to us soon.

Monday now, and the Tapestry Boot Camp is up on Macmillan's site. Having spoken to a fundraiser in Taunton earlier today, it appears that there were problems with Macmillan's site so possibly not our end after all.

Here's the link to Macmillan's site: http://bit.ly/oLTrWD You might have to scroll down a bit to find the Boot Camp listing, but if you put our postcode TA3 6QL at the top, we're there - and our little mug with hearts is there in the 'Details' bit too.

Now to get emails out, and a few flyers to our friends at the Smokery! It's that busy, busy Monday feeling.

A gentle reminder about Christmas Stockings

2011-08-08T17:48:00.000+01:00

The school holidays are well underway, we really are into proper summer time now. For many of us that means a welcome chance to get on with our favourite hobbies, away from everyday routines. No school runs, how wonderful!

Over the last few weekends, Christmas stockings have made up a large percentage of customer orders so I just thought I'd quietly remind everyone that this really is a great time to get stuck in to your needlepoint. I've looked at the calendar, you're fine at the moment. Our making up deadline is 1st November.

Here's all the information you'll need for when you complete your stocking, if you want to send it in to us for making up: http://bit.ly/oxrpFO

If you need fabric samples please give us a call and we'll send some out to you. In the meantime, enjoy your holiday stitching!

Tapestry Boot Camp for Macmillan Cancer Support

2011-08-07T16:09:00.002+01:00

A date for your diary! For years I've wanted to become involved in Macmillan Cancer Support's World's Biggest Coffee Morning event. At our old premises there wasn't enough space to do anything, and here at our more spacious workshop I've never figured out quite how to do it...until now!

Here's the plan: on Friday September 30th we will run a series of 1hr intensive tapestry classes. We're calling the event our Tapestry Boot Camp, though I suspect the day will be rather less formal and more fun than the title suggests! Maximum of 10 places at each class, so you are assured of lots of personal tuition & attentioon. It'll be a great opportunity for would-be stitchers to pick up the basics of needlepoint and get started on a wonderful new hobby.
In each Boot Camp hour we will go through the basic differences between half cross stitch and tent stitch, talk about different gauges of canvas, and answer any questions that anyone has about where they think they have been going wrong with any tapestry in the past, or what they'd like to improve on.

We will work on 12" tapestry clip frames, so you could also use the class as a chance to see which side you're on in the 'Love 'em or Loathe 'em' tapestry frame debate!

We can comfortably seat 8 people all round one big table in our spacious packing room, with two extra people at a separate table in the same room if needed. Below you can see Lin, pictured when we were setting up for one of our Open Days last year. Lin will be on coffee, coats and chat duty on Boot Camp day.

We'll supply all materials for the classes as well as coffee/soft drink & biscuits, all we ask is a donation to Macmillan on the day - maybe £10? - for your lesson. I hope you can come along and pick up a few tapestry tips with like-minded folk and help to raise some money for a very good cause.

Please email kelly@jollyred.co.uk if you would like to come to one of the Boot Camp tapestry classes. If you can bring a friend, or maybe come as a group with friends that would be great. The fun & friendly atmosphere will be lovely, it always is.

Why not make your tapestry class part of a day out? You can time yours to fit in lunch at Brown & Forrest Smokery just up the road from us, maybe visit Barrington Court, or visit one of the many Art Weeks venues as Somerset Art Week will be in full swing this year from 17 September.

Friday Sept 30th Tapestry Boot Camp class times

10am - 11am

12.00 noon - 1pm

2pm - 3pm

4pm - 5pm

BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL Much as I'd love it if people just turned up, it would be a bit chaotic to have lots of people at one session then nobody around for the next one! Email, or call on 01460 281111 if you'd like to come to one of the classes. If you'd like to come but can only do weekends we'll try to sort out a Saturday class too.

Look forward to hearing from you, and to seeing you in September x

Choosing a tapestry frame

2011-08-02T12:26:00.005+01:00

Choosing a tapestry frame by mail order can be a tricky business. Ideally one would nip out to one's local needlework retailer and select the right one, but sometimes that just isn't possible and buying online is the only thing to do. We get asked quite a lot of questions about the tapestry frames that we stock and I thought you might like a few tips if you're thinking about buying a frame. I would stress that there are lots of different frames on the market and we don't stock them all, as we have chosen to stay with our tried and tested inexpensive ones. And if you're working on cross stitch using Aida fabric, you'd normally choose a round hoop rather than one of the handheld tapestry frames.

We stock two basic types of frame:

1. The traditional 'sew' frame which has webbing along the upper and lower edges. You stitch your tapestry canvas on to the frame via the webbing. It doesn't take long to do. Here's a Gypsy Heart starter kit, shown on a 12" Sew Frame:

You can see the webbing, stapled to the top bar of the frame. It only takes a few minutes to attach the canvas to the frame, so if this is the kind of frame you've used before and maybe need one in a different size then these are the frames for you.

We stock 12", 18" and 24" SEW Frames. Incidentally, Gypsy Heart shown above on the frame was stitched using wool from a Gypsy Heart starter kit - it goes a long way. Sorry, I couldn't resist mentioning that.

2. We now also stock 'No Sew' clip frames in 12", 18" and 24". As the name suggests no sewing is required, you just clip your tapestry on to the frame and hey presto you're ready to start. Here's Little Elephants, with a 12" clip frame:

The clip frames have a groove along the top and lower bars. You place your tapestry over the top then put the clips into the grooves where they'll stay put while you're stitching. These frames are great if you need to swap your projects around and you want to avoid amassing a collection of frames with half-finished tapestries on them. I've got tapestry frames in various rooms all over the house, some with tapestries on and some waiting for some needlepoint action.

I hope this helps you to decide which frame to choose, if indeed you decide to use a frame for your tapestry. As I've said before, each to their own. We never really push the tapestry frames, you either like 'em, or you don't. Personally I wouldn't be without one...or six!

Joshie and the Bears

2011-08-02T10:20:00.006+01:00

Time to show off some gems from the wool room, we've had some lovely Jolly Red starter kits in recently. One customer, whose mini masterpieces are shown below confesses to being addicted to the kits. Her son Joshua likes to get involved when she's stitching, and advises her on the wording to add to each of her tapestries.

Joshie made sure that his Mum's first tapestry, Gardening Bear was just for him:

Here's the whole cushion:

I love it. I would never have thought of using up the leftover wool by doing colour blocks in the border, but it looks great. Please note how we've even got the last outside row of stitching in, so there's a row of 'bear beige' to separate the blues. You don't have to worry about adding any extra rows of stitching if you are sending a tapestry in for our Making Up Service, we don't lose any stitching in the piping.

Here's the next one, Gypsy Heart:

Lovely bright colour blocks in the border again and I really like the little hearts in the border. Here's the finished cushion:

And here's Farmer Bear, collected this morning from our fabulous cushion lady and now on his way home. What a great idea to extend the grass and sky to make a larger design. Joshie, if this was your idea you are a very clever boy!

Now that our courier has collected today's cushions, I've started to open this week's Making Up Service post. Joshie's Mum has been very, very busy - we have two more little tapestries to make up for very special family occasions.

As she is going to run out of starter tapestry kits to stitch, Joshie's Mum has now moved on to bigger projects and is about to start her first A-Z Animals kit. Watch this space for more creations!!

Kit Book 15, we're getting there!

2011-07-31T16:14:00.003+01:00

What a fabulous weekend! Lots of work, lots of fun, and some lovely walks. Today I've been working on our next catalogue Kit Book 15, but making sure to take breaks to enjoy the fabulous Somerset sunshine. Whenever I'm working at home I tend to take over the dining room, at the back of the house above the basement kitchen. As I'm not the tidiest of people, last year mrjollyred & I decided that our spare bedroom should become my work room, a real luxury as I've never managed to have a room just for me. Do I hear violins? Quite right too, it's not fair!

Two years after moving in, the plan is slowly coming together and I am getting closer to that elusive room of my own, but it will be at the front of the house, not at the back. It's still quiet, the light is perfect, but I'll lose the wonderful views that I have now over the moors. There have been some quite spectacular sunsets recently.

Back to the catalogue, Kit Book 15. I now have a draft ready to send to the printers and I know which pictures are going where and roughly what text needs to be on each page. I can't wait to see a mock-up, those rumours about tapestry people being 'so patient' are complete nonsense! This year's Kit Book is going to be a bit different to earlier ones and more than ever I have to bear in mind that there are some people who will only use the catalogue as an occasional reference because they enjoy seeing our kits online, but there are other customers for whom the catalogue is their only way of seeing our current range of kits.

I'll keep you updated with catalogue news as and when I have any, I'm just delighted that for once it seems - touch wool! - to be going to plan.

You know that feeling that you've just jinxed something? No, I'll ignore it. It'll all be fine...

Right now, I think it's time to move away from the computer, as there is a spoilt little prince demanding attention in the garden. Mrjollyred mowed the lawn earlier and Flik has been using the parched grass as his personal exfoliation patch, rolling around doing his horsey impressions. He (Flik) is also a bit excited. It's his 12th birthday today - Happy Birthday Flik!

See you later, happy Sunday everyone! x

What - nearly August?!

2011-07-29T16:06:00.001+01:00

I know, can you believe it? No, me neither. I only realised that August was preparing to leapfrog over July when I spotted on the calendar that my friend Sarah's birthday is this Sunday, which is 31st July. At least I've managed to get her card out on time, but I'm still in shock!

Those of you familiar with Jolly Red will know about our email Newsletters. If you haven't signed up, please do and we'll let you know about any offers, new designs etc - all the lovely Jolly Red info that we can't quite fit on to the website! We won't bombard you with information, and promise only to get in touch when we've got somethhing to say. And you have our complete assurance that we never pass on your details to anyone else.

Some polka dots you'll like a lot!

2011-07-26T13:05:00.001+01:00

Our starter kits have been more really popular than ever this year. It's been great to see so many of the little treasures coming in for our making up service, and I've enjoyed helping customers decide on colour options. If you're sending your latest work in to us, give us a call if you aren't sure about what colour/s to use for your tapestry. We see so many, the chances are we will know what works well and will be able to help.

Here's a journey involving a lovely Polka Dot Heart tapestry we had in recently:

With Jolly Red starter kits, the area in the centre (4" x 4") is printed in colour but as you can see here there's a really decent border (an extra 3" all round), so you can add a name, some extra stripes or other patterns in the border. Liz, whose heart tapestry this is, used the leftover wool from her Polka Dot Heart to enlarge the design - those whole skeins in the kit really do go a long way!

Before stretching the tapestry, I tried to visualise various border/piping/backing options. Here's no.1, turquoise border with red piping and lilac (I think those in the know say 'lavender' these days) backing.

No.2 option, pinky/magenta border with bright red piping and either a turquoise or lime green backing.

And finally, option no.3. Purple border, turquoise piping and red backing.

Helping to choose customers' fabrics is one of the best parts of life here at Jolly Red. You'll note I didn't call it 'work' at Jolly Red - it's much, much more than that! The colour choices for finished work are so important. When I see the tapestries I understand exactly how much work, thought and care has gone in to each of them. And when the tapestry is then given as a gift, or kept for one's own home, it's a real heirloom that will last for generations. That's one reason why I don't spend too much time worrying about 'trends' (sorry, I actually shuddered at the thought!), because if something's 'on trend' this year, it'll be dated next year. Go with your own instinct, follow your heart! If it feels right for you, it is right.

Here's Liz's completed cushion, she went for option no.1 - a good choice!

The side view:

The colours are much more accurate in this picture, I think it must have gone a bit cloudy outside when I took the picture above it!

If you aren't sure about what colours to choose for your tapestry, don't feel that you have to go for more than one colour. You can if you like keep it completely simple and go for one colour for border, piping and backing. And you can even choose subdued colours, we do them too! Again, whatever's right for you.

Musings from the American Museum

2011-07-25T13:54:00.002+01:00

Over the last few months I've received emails from Jolly Red stitchers in America, planning to visit the UK in the autumn- or should I say 'fall'?! - and asking if it's okay to pop in and visit our workshop while they're over. There's an easy answer to that - please do come! We welcome visitors. If you can call in advance that would be great, so we can tidy up a bit first, or at least try to make the wool room and packing areas slightly presentable.

Two ladies who sent separate emails are going to be visiting Bath. They looked online and realised that we aren't that far away. Indeed we aren't, it'll take just over an hour to get to Isle Brewers - but it's always a good idea to allow a bit longer if you don't know the roads.

I was thinking about our American visitors, and how nice it will be to see them when I visited the American Museum last week. It's a real treat for me to take a whole day off during the week, but I'd been wanting to go to the museum for so long that I couldn't put it off any longer. The last time I went was for the Candace Bahouth exhibition, I don't know how many years ago. The sun was shining as mrjollyred and I set off. We stopped off first in Bradford-on-Avon, a really lovely town which reminds me so much of Frome, or maybe it's the other way round. It's something about interesting little independent shops on a hill, really lovely.

I popped in to the new and absolutely beautiful haberdashery and knitting shop Jumble Jelly and while I was there mrjollyred disappeared to the sweet shop next door and filled up several bags with old-fashioned sweets. After lunch across the road at The Bear we set off to Claverton Manor, enjoying the sunshine and feeling pretty smug about how we were having a whole day of sunshine on our mini holiday. On the way over we discussed how we'd spend a leisurely hour going round the house looking at the quilts and rugs (or rather I would, while mrjollyred looked at the weapons!), have a cup of tea and cake out on the terrace while taking in the glorious views over Bath, then stroll over to the Marilyn Monroe exhibition.

You can guess what happened - within minutes of our arrival at the museum it bucketed down!

What a dreadful picture, though it does illustrate just how dark everything went in a matter of minutes. As you can see, there definitely wasn't a queue for the ice creams. Round the back of the museum, people were grabbing their cups of tea and running for cover.

When I arrived at the workshop today I found an order for tapestry kits from... the Country Store at the American Museum, of all places! As luck would have it, all the kits on the order were in stock so they are now on their way to the museum. The Country Store is lovely, with lots of great gift ideas, so I'm chuffed to bits to think that Jolly Red's kits will be on the shelves.

If you're in Bath I hope you'll get a chance to visit the American Museum, it's well worth it - but I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. The quilts were every bit as good as I'd imagined they would be, but my favourite things were the little rugs, especially the one with the running horse.

If you do go, and you get a chance to enjoy a piece of cake on the terrace, it would be kind of you to not let me know about that bit - I'll be very jealous!

Another lovely heart

2011-07-20T14:02:00.002+01:00

You've already seen some of the wonderful creations that we get in each week for our making up service. Recently a beautifully stitched 'Queen of Hearts' tapestry arrived in the post. The customer who stitched it had already taken a look at our early blog posting of March 30th 'Love These Hearts' and knew that she too wanted hers to be made up in velvet. She chose two colours, and the finished result was wonderful, I thought you might like to see it:

Great isn't it?! Do bear this two colour option in mind if you're about to send a tapestry in for our making up service. With our velvet colours, we stick to the colours that we are most frequently asked for which tend to be the rich, vibrant colours - magenta, purple, reds, blues and greens.

Mix and match to your heart's delight!

Five reasons to take up needlepoint

2011-07-20T13:01:00.002+01:00

Crikey, there are lots of reasons aren't there - where to start?! Let's dive straight in:

1. You don't like 'sewing', and no woolly hobby you've ever tried has worked out very well.

Don't worry, needlepoint may well be the hobby you've been looking for. We receive a lot of feedback here at Jolly Red and over the years we've had a good deal of correspondence and calls from people telling us that needlepoint is in fact the only stitchy hobby they've ever got to grips with. It isn't really like anything else, so it's worth having a go even if you start on something small. Unlike sewing, patchwork or quilting there aren't bits to join together. You need only concern yourself with the tapestry itself, and if you like you can even send your finished work in to us for making up once you've done the fun bit!

Whenever I've run a tapestry class, there has sometimes been a reluctant person in the group - and that doesn't mean Lin, who is usually my able assistant on such days! Perhaps the apprehensive stitcher had bad experiences with earlier efforts, or just decided that they're no good at tapestry. Whatever the reason, they soon forget their misgivings and get stuck in, with a new found confidence.

2. It's quick to learn

We provide very good, clear instructions with all of Jolly Red kits. I'm sure the same goes for other kit manufacturers too, but if in doubt you could also get a needlepoint book from your local library as it will probably contain a stitch guide. Settle down with a cup of tea and you should be stitching in fifteen minutes, maybe even sooner. If you're a bit nervous, and starting on your first kit, practise a bit in the border first.

3. You don't need any fancy equipment

Once you've got your tapestry canvas, wool and needle and have grabbed a pair of scissors you are ready to go. The only other thing you might consider is whether or not to use a tapestry frame. There are two schools of thought here:

Those not in favour of frames aren't keen because for them and their way of working a frame is cumbersome and bulky. If you like to curl up on the sofa with your tapestry, or always have it in a bag ready to pull out if you have a spare few minutes then you may well agree with this point of view.

On the other hand, those of us who like frames wouldn't be without one. They make your work easy to pick up and put down, and you can see at a glance where you are with your stitching. I do think they help to keep your tension nice and even too. I always use a frame, that might be just because I started off using one. Each to their own, do whatever's best for you!

4. You can still be sociable

One of the best things about needlepoint is that you can still talk while stitching. It's also great to do in front of the TV in the evenings. Sometimes I'll be stuck into my latest tapestry or stitching up a colour sample for a new design and I find that I've barely looked at the TV, it becomes more of a 'visual radio'! Which brings me on to another benefit of tapestry:

5. It's therapeutic

It's so easy to get absorbed when you're stitching. You can mull over the day's events, plan your garden in your head, and generally put the world to rights. It's so relaxing, and a great way to wind down after a busy day. With each stitch you become more and more engrossed, which leads me on to a warning:
it's also very addictve!

Summer's here - still!

2011-07-15T11:10:00.003+01:00

Don't worry, I won't start another 'Summer's here and the time is right' thingummy, I promise! It's been a very busy week here, our holiday stitching offer is going really well. Thank you for all your orders!

Last weekend I had a big tidy up in the wool room. It's always good to come in on Monday to find everything in order, ready to be messed up again. The fabrics hardly ever look like this:

Very neat, although it did help that a lot of them were out of the building, already being used for making up projects. Take a look at the cushion pads, they're tidy too:

This week we've been sending out loads of kits, keeping an eye on the shelves and making sure they don't get completely bare, and reordering canvases. Both of our printers are on holiday over the next few weeks, and DMC's factory is closed down for 3 weeks in August (!) so we have to make the most of suppliers and services while they're available. There is a definite holiday mood in needlepoint land, so I'm just letting you know that next week we too will be getting the holiday vibe so we will be around, but on a flexi-time basis rather than 9-5, so don't be alarmed if you call the office in those hours and the phone isn't picked up in several rings as it normally is.

We'll still be packing kits, stretching canvases and sending cushions and Christmas stockings out but at a slightly leisurely pace, providing we can get to the packing tables. There has been an obstacle in recent weeks:

Lunchtime is our main kit packing time, and being the warmest time of the day the sun shines through the skylights and provides a lovely sunspot for Flik - exactly where we stand to label up boxes and do the paperwork for orders. Have you ever tried moving a stubborn old Jack Russell? It's not easy!

It's Friday afternoon now, the postman has collected today's kits. The cushion pads are looking very tempting, I think that holiday feeling might have kicked in a bit early. Night night x

Have you seen the light?

2011-07-14T17:44:00.000+01:00

Thursday is our main canvas stretching at Jolly Red. By getting it done on Thursdays, it's often dry by Monday, always a good way to start the next week. Today's batch has been extremely varied - starter kits, cushions and birth samplers.

We do sometimes see the occasional missed area of stitching on customer tapestries. It's not a major problem with cushions as we insert a zip in the backing fabric so the missing stitches can easily be filled in at a later date.

Here's our little tip for today: if you're still at the stage of completing your latest tapestry before sending it in, don't forget to hold it up to the light before you do, that way you'll spot any gaps.

And you already know the next tip: don't trim down the edges! Thank you, it really does make it so much easier at our end if you don't.

Congratulations! Needlepoint kneelers

2011-07-12T17:33:00.000+01:00

One of the problems with having a hobby like tapestry that produces such wonderful results is that pretty soon word of it gets out. Before you know it, you're stitching tapestries for all your relatives to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, a new home - anything at all.

I do sometimes feel a bit for customers when I hear of their productivity. One lady in Hertfordshire calls regularly and is stitching Christmas stockings for practically everyone she says hello to! I winced recently when another customer called. She had already sent in two Congratulations wedding tapestries last year to be made in to ring cushions and kneelers for a family wedding. Here's one of them, made up in blue:

The two cushions went down so well that Diana had been asked to stitch another two, this time we backed and edged them in red.

More views:

Super smart, aren't they! I know you want to see underneath, here it is:

Gorgeous! And guess what - Diana has now been asked to stitch another two. I've promised that I'll do another wedding design if she gets asked again.

Summer's here...

2011-07-11T13:34:00.002+01:00

Summer's here and the time is right for... running up to a tree

Summer's here and the time is right for...drinking cups of tea

Summer's here and the time is right for...a bit of plant envy

Summer's here and the time is right for...eating 'cause it's so yummy!

Don't worry, I'll stop now but it's so tempting to go on with 'summer's here' quips!

The above pictures were all taken last week on brief outings away from Jolly Red's HQ, social trips involving get-togethers with Twitter folk. Twitter is real, and tweeters are real people too!

The first pics are of Flik, shown using up a whole day's energy sprinting up to the tree at Burrow Hill in Stembridge. We arrived too late to buy cider, but we were in time to visit Rachel aka @cakestandgirl - sorry, you'll have to go to Twitter to find out more about everyone, it'll only take a minute though.

The other pictures were taken when a group of us met for a tweetup at Divine Wines on the High Street in Wincanton. What a fabulous venue, and Jenny @DivineWinesWinc looked after us all so well preparing a delicious and very colourful lunch - colour is so important, I get grumpy if I'm faced with drab food. At Divine Wines everything was colourful including the glasses, chairs, tablecloths and the lovely plants which were filling up most corners not already taken up by happy diners. A visit is highly recommended, I can't wait to go back! Last week were lucky enough to sit outside in the secret courtyard, basking in the sunshine, each of us enjoying time away from our respective workplaces and promising that as working ladies we would make more of an effort to organise future tweetups.

Pictured with me are Georgie @TheFlowerFarmer and her sister-in-law, Sue @dairyhouse, and Tamsyn @tamsyng, whose studio is just up the road from Divine Wines.

Happy days! And now - back to work, there's catching up to do!

A Hat Trick of Harriets

2011-07-08T11:50:00.001+01:00

We notice lots of coincidences here, usually with customers sending in the same designs with the same name on. It's happened again this week, and we had to be ultra careful matching up right backing fabrics with the right design for these two Butterflies Samplers.

It's clearly a week of Harriets. One of our customers has just driven down from Bristol with her daughter to pick up her Congratulations tapestries, made in to kneelers. Can you guess what her daughter is called? You've got it!

You don't see one for ages, then it's Harriets everywhere.

Alphabet Ark, two colour backings

2011-07-06T12:27:00.003+01:00

Alphabet Ark is one of our most popular needlepoint designs. Hardly surprising really, it can be stitched for a boy or a girl and is often stitched before the birth of the baby with just the name panel to complete once the parents have come up with a name. We stitched the name panel on our sample with the name 'Joshua' using the 8906 tapestry wool, a very dark bottle green (not black, but it looks as though it is) from the kit.

Recently we've had quite a few Alphabet Arks in to make up and some customers have decided to have one colour for the piping and another colour for the backing. This option is ideal if you want to have a red backing. The design itself already has several rows of red around the outer border, so a contrast piping breaks it up a bit. Have a look here, see what you think:

Alphabet Ark, purple piping

This morning one of our customers drove up from Tiverton to collect her cushion. It looks lovely:

Doesn't it look great? By stitching the name in the purple 8590 and the name panel in 8484 the design suddenly looks more feminine. Meredith is quite a long name and apparently it needed a bit of jiggling around with before Mrs E was happy with it. I think she's done a great job, and her cushion does answer the question we often get asked: 'Can I fit a long name in?' Answer: 'Yes!'

Oh go on then, here's the side view:

For a more 'boyish' look you could choose a blue piping with red backing, or indeed blue piping and blue backing. And the same with red, just stick to one colour if you like - it's just nice to have the different options.

More pics coming soon, we have had some fabulous starter kits in and they are on the stretching boards now. Jolly Red starter kits are superb, with plenty of wool for the design to be expanded quite a bit in all directions. But no need to take my word for it, you'll soon be able to see more gorgeous customer creations. Watch this space!

Independents' Day

2011-07-04T17:33:00.006+01:00

Today is Independents' Day in the UK, reminding us all to make an effort to shop from small retailers rather than just the whoppers. Unfortunately I'm at Jolly Red HQ when most of the smaller shops are open during the week, so mrjollyred and I made an extra special effort to shop locally over the weekend.

Saturday involved a trip to Evans, our local butcher in Langport. Mrjollyred declared the leg of lamb we bought to be 'one of the finest he's ever tasted.' We cooked it nice and slowly, it really was delicious! After the butcher, we skipped across the road to buy strawberries...but the people under the clock had already sold out. Bah!

In the afternoon we took a trip to Kingfisher Carpets in Martock, and have decided that's where we'll be buying the carpet for our dining room. They have a really good selection of carpets, and Kingfisher - a family-run business - will fit them too. We don't even think it'll be any more expensive than going to one of the big places.

On Sunday it was the usual walkies for Flik involving a stroll by the river, stopping at Foster's newsagent to buy the Sunday papers.

Mrjollyred had birthday shopping to do, so he popped in to Keeble Antiques, a wonderful book shop in Langport. I defy anyone to not find something in there for an emergency last-minute birthday present, Clive carries a huge and diverse stock and can order in most books for you too. If you don't find a book, he has lovely notecard sets which are always useful.

Mrjollyred's finds at Keeble Antiques

The Tracey Emin book was a surprise for me. Yippee!

With Independents' Day in mind, in the office we've been working on a mailing for all of the independent retailers who stock Jolly Red kits. It includes an update on our new tapestry designs, as well as a big thank you. There's a little treat in there too.

It is important that we all support 'bricks and mortar' needlework shops. The owners have to carry stock, they have bills and staff to pay and are making a huge commitment to keep the crafts we love alive. We don't want them to disappear. So please support your local needlework shop. If you are looking for a Jolly Red stockist near you, please email or call and we'll try to track down the closest.

Our weekend did involve a bit of timetabling as the smaller shops aren't necessarily open all day, but it was very rewarding and good fun. I haven't mentioned too much about our support of a couple of independent pubs - I couldn't let mrjollyred lose interest in our Martock outing!

As always, Monday has been the busiest day of the week here at Jolly Red. There's just enough time for a picture of Flik, our very independent dog. Making sure we have to trip over him, wherever we go. What a lump!

A river walk, and more riveting talk

2011-06-30T19:20:00.003+01:00

Every now and then we have a really nice, mellow day here. Today has been one such day. It started particularly well, with Flik and I enjoying a walk by the river first thing. I haven't carried out a proper study but I suspect that days beginning with a nice walk, preferably near water, are far more likely than not to turn out to be generally pretty good.

David our accountant was in the office for most of the day. He and Julie spent the day huddled over calculators and munching sandwiches and cake from the party-style lunch I'd set out for us all. David likes his food, and Julie's still recovering from her recent Glastonbury adventures so appreciates being able to eat while not being soaking wet!

While they were punching numbers into machines, I had a good chance to check on some of the week's making up. Three of the stockings that we only stretched yesterday are already nearly dry. This warm weather is wonderful, the tapestries take so much longer to dry later in the year. Of course that's a hint - well spotted! - please do send yours in sooner rather than later.

I also opened the latest batch of jiffy bags and boxes. I get really excited opening the post. What a mixture we've got for our next round of stretching, I'll make sure Calum has double helpings of spinach for extra muscle power.

So, a good day. We had all the kits in stock for last night's and today's orders so that was very positive too and they were packed in to the post van at 4pm. But do you want to know what really made my day? It was this:

We receive lots of very nice post from customers, and extremely thoughtful notes and comments in with orders and tapestries for making up, thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to write or email. This note, enclosed with Liz's making up, makes all my blogging biz worthwhile. So you're stuck with me! Watch out for more tales from the wool room, meanders round the lanes of Somerset and all the latest about Flik, everyone's favourite Jack Russell.

Just working on the next newsletter, then it's time for another stroll by the river. I hope you get a chance to do the same!

Summer time, and the stitching is festive

2011-06-29T09:51:00.000+01:00

Things are hotting up here - outside it's turned back to summer, and here in the workshop the Christmas rush is well underway.

Over half of the tapestries in at the moment for our making up service are Christmas stockings. I can't thank everyone enough for sending them in early! Not only is it great for us as it makes it less stressful later on in the year, but for you it's also one less thing to worry about nearer the time.

If you're considering stitching a Christmas Stocking, this really is a good time of year to do it. Obviously, non tapestry people will raise their eyebrows when you're stitching Father Christmas in the garden, while sipping a Pimms. If you can aim to start one in July and have it finished by the end of summer that's ideal, and it'll still give you plenty of time to get it made up into a beautiful stocking whether you do it yourself or send it in to us.

I know I'm not the only person thinking in this way, as our orders are including more Christmas stockings and some retailers have put in their first orders already too.

If as so often happens summer whizzes past and you come to the end of August with your stitching intentions in tatters, then don't worry. You can take the leisurely approach and start yours in the autumn, to finish next spring/summer. It'll be next Christmas before we know it!

The animals went out two by two

2011-06-23T17:44:00.003+01:00

What a great day, I can happily report that the new A-Z Animals kits have now all left the building, so if you've ordered one of these new kits in the last few weeks they should be with you by the weekend.

Yesterday the new canvases arrived, and the colours were fantastic. Looking at our 'I for Iguana and Insects', you can see that we get the designs printed with quite a lot of border around them. Very useful if you want to enlarge the design using your leftover wool, there's a good few inches all round on the A-Z Animals.

Having checked them all of the canvases, the next job is to double check the reference charts that go out with each printed canvas.

I must apologise (as always) for the photography, it tends to be a bit spontaneous around here! Everything checked, and we ended up with some real kits to send out. If you're watching Wimbledon over the weekend, I hope your kit will arrive and help relieve any tennis tension!

Although the A-Z Animals are designed each with a particular letter in mind, don't feel you have to stick rigidly with it. If you have a child that likes a particular design and their name doesn't correspond with the particular initial of the design, you can if you like just leave out the two letters in the central part of the design. Use the enclosed alphabet to stitch any name you like in the lower name panel.

Here's an example of what I mean, on an 'E for Elephant', brought in yesterday for our making up service:

Dan, the boy who this design has been stitched for, likes elephants and was determined that this was the design for him! In the same family, 'C for Cat' was stitched for Georgina last year.

Obviously it's up to you whether you get the finished designs framed or made into cushions. Either way they'll look great, and they do look like substantial 'proper' tapestries in spite of being smaller than a traditional cushion. If you have lots of children to stitch for in a family, the designs are a great option if you think you're going to be pushed for time, or run out of steam half way through bigger designs!

Here are some earlier A-Zs of ours, made into cushions:

Not forgetting the side view. Two colours for these, not the new three colours that we all seem to love nowadays!

Whenever we make up our own cushions for photography and to loan out as samples to shops, we do tend to make them up looking a bit unisex, as we know that if we made one up with a lilac and pink border then no boys would like it. Boys are sensitive souls when it comes to colours. 'F for Flamingo' was ditched because my own two boys said that boys wouldn't like a design with pink in it, even though it's hard to know what other colour a flamingo could be!

On the other side of the boy/girl design debate, 'Incy Wincy and other Insect Friends' had to be abandoned because my own boys - teenagers now, but still very good judges about these things - said that girls wouldn't like it. A shame really, I've always liked spiders. Surely I'm not the only one?

Now it's time to get on with the next batch of A-Z Animal designs. Let me know if you're waiting for a particular letter, I think W & G should be next. And 'B' has been baffling me for ages - bear, butterflies...no can't do lots of butterflies or it'll look too girly, can't do a bear or it might look scarey...etc ...etc! Here we go again!

New A-Z Animals, looking good

2011-06-22T16:08:00.000+01:00

It's all coming together. Having received my over-excited 'please go ahead with printing' email, our printer has sent out the batch of new A-Z Animal designs and they have arrived, four days later. It can be done, how fantastic!

Last week's wool order has also arrived today. I'm so grateful to our wool people when they get missing colours to us quickly. I do know what they do, it's way beyond the call of duty and really is appreciated. We'd got to the stage here where we'd taken all of the 8034 (off white) skeins of wool out of unsold kits to put in customer orders and new orders were starting to stack up. Whenever a colour is missing, it's suddenly needed in every single kit.

So now we're unpacking the wool, folding canvases and then with any luck sending out complete kits tomorrow, 23rd June. Fingers crossed, let's hope the wool's all there...

Fab Farmyard, Magnificent Monkey...

2011-06-20T10:08:00.002+01:00

We've been really busy lately, so on Saturday I decided to sneak in and do a bit of extra canvas stretching. We've had lots of Christmas stockings in for making up so I decided to get a whole batch done. It's nice to come in on a Monday morning and see the canvases already drying nicely.

As it happens, Saturday was a great day to be in the workshop. The first proofs of our new A-Z Animals designs had needed adjusting, so I was delighted to see the postman arrive with the second batch of proofs. They look great!

My biggest concern was the pale green in the side panels, which was looking very pale. It's now been brightened up and is so much better. The same has been done for colours needing tweaking in the other new A-Z Animals, so we really are nearly there, now just waiting for the delivery of the finished canvases.

New A-Z designs getting closer!

2011-06-15T14:57:00.000+01:00

Last week when I updated our website I put a likely date of 24th June as the date that our new A-Z Animals canvases would arrive. I chose the date thinking 'they'll get here much earlier, so we'll surprise everyone by getting their kits to them by 22nd at the latest'. However, it is not to be. I've had the canvases back to approve - 'F for Farmyard', 'I for Iguana', 'L for Lion' and 'M for Monkey' - and they all need changes. Some colours need 'upping' a bit as they don't look strong enough.

Reproofing of these new designs is now underway, so it looks as though the 24th June was an accurate date after all. Still hoping to get all the A-Z Animals out next week. Everything is crossed!

And a big thank you for all your orders, as always.

Congratulations! From cloak to cushion

2011-06-15T09:03:00.000+01:00

In April I mentioned that it's the start of the wedding season. Well, it still is and we are getting quite a few of our 'Congratulations' tapestries in for making up. Lucy, a keen Jolly Red stitcher, recently brought in her own Congratulations tapestry to be made into a cushion.

The cushion was to be made using some of the fabric from her wedding cloak. What a great wedding it must have been! We made Lucy's cushion up with a mitred border of her lovely ivory chenilley style fabric, and used some of the moss green silk for the piping.

Before you ask, here's the side view:

Lucy's cushion looked fantastic, and she was really pleased with it. It was so soft too, I came over a bit sleepy when putting in the cushion pad!

The colours that we used in Lucy's cushion demonstrate that you don't always need to use strong colours in a mitred border. We've made Congratulations up with all sorts of colours.

Coming soon is an update on one customer whose tapestries were made into kneelers. We made up a pair for her in blue last year, and now we have another pair in to be made up in red. She already has an order for another pair after that!

Puppies & Stroppies

2011-06-09T20:09:00.002+01:00

Well, what a rollercoaster couple of weeks it's been! It's always hectic when we're bringing out new designs, so we should know what to expect. The current excitement has been about our new 'Puppies Christmas Stocking', which is proving to be very popular. Thank you to all who have ordered it, tomorrow the first ones will be heading out to UK addresses, New Zealand, Australia & America. How exciting to think of the little darlings going so far on their first outings. I hope they've had their jabs!

Here's a view of one of the deliveries we've had here recently:

It is a fact of life that everything runs out at once, and it's the same here. These 25 boxes all contain new starter kit bags, ordered in February - no rush, don't worry! What a drama it was on the day they arrived, the driver wasn't really used to country lanes. It is an extreme understatement to say that he had 'a bit of trouble' getting his 45ft trailer to anywhere near our workshop.

There's more to say about this day, but let's be positive instead and look at today's delivery. Get ready, it's very exciting!

Wow! Fantastic, the packaging labels for Puppies, AND for the new A-Z Animals - 'F for Farmyard', 'I for Iguana', 'L for Lion', 'M for Monkey' and 'T for Tiger'. We're just waiting for the canvases for the A-Z Animals now, and pictures of the finished tapestries are about to go up on our website. Everything should be ready to go out in the next two weeks.

But as I said at the beginning, the Puppies kits are going out tomorrow. I hope that the UK ones will arrive on Saturday as we seem to have very unsettled weather again. It might be nice to settle down to a spot of tapestry.

I mentioned everything running out at once. Well, we're going to need more of our large kit bags in the autumn. I think I'd better advise the bags people that next time they should send a van, not a 'house moving' sized vehicle! I dread to think what would have happened with our bags if we'd been in the middle of winter with the ground wet, they'd almost certainly have ended up in a ditch inside an overturned trailer.

Incidentally, the packaging labels were personally delivered by one of our printers on his way home to Yeovil. Lovely Somerset businesses, you can't beat them!

Blessed with such lovely customers

2011-06-06T16:18:00.001+01:00

We get wonderful messages from customers. It is always so nice to receive them, so thank you for all feedback and news of what you've been stitching and where it's headed off to. There are often nice notes in with tapestries destined for our making up service too.

Today I opened a carefully-wrapped parcel for our making up service, with such a sweet note. Here's part of it:

'I hope my tapestry has arrived with you safely. It's my first attempt at doing

one so apologies if the workmanship isn't of your usual quality. I hope it is

good enough to make into a cushion...'

As is pretty well always the case, the tapestry is really well-stitched in tent stitch, and no apology or explantaion was needed. It will be lovely to make up, for the customer's friend's birthday later in June.

I suppose if I was out of my comfort zone, maybe trying something for the first time I'd be nervous about sending it off, imagining that it gets scrutinised by a critical panel of 'experts in their field'.

Don't worry, if you're sending anything in to us for our making up service, all is fine. Flik is our resident expert, usually quite literally in his field.

Step away from the tapestry!

2011-06-02T13:35:00.004+01:00

Thursday is our main canvas stretching day here in the workshop. This morning we've been stretching some gorgeous birth samplers. They have been beautifully stitched, but the only tricky thing is that the canvas has been cropped all around the stitched area, making it quite difficult for us to stretch them.

Tapestry canvases tend to need stretching first of all from bottom left to top right and then we work up, down and sideways from those points. If there isn't a lot of canvas left around the design, It's really hard to get a grip to stretch properly.

With today's birth samplers we stretched a bit, walked away, came back and stretched a bit more. Repeat this a few times and you get the idea.

So if you're near the end of your needlepoint and are about to send it in, please don't be tempted to trim the edges. If you can, then please do just walk away from your tapestry and put your scissors in the drawer or give them to someone to temporarily hide for you. It's so hard to resist the the urge to 'just tidy it all up a bit'. If you can't get rid of the scissors, maybe you can find something else to cut - does the dog need a haircut? Any children nearby need their fringes trimmed? I know it'll muck up your scissors, but at least you'll have dealt with your impulse!

Patchwork Cat with built in TV area

2011-06-01T15:57:00.002+01:00

Here we are, 1st of June, it is definitely time for an update. I've been neglecting the blog a bit as I've been working on behind the scenes stuff, getting our new designs ready. This afternoon, I've taken a breather from the final checks of the packaging labels and the artwork of the new A-Z Animals. Once again, it's time to see what's been going on in the wool room.

I love spotting coincidences when customers send work in to us - sometimes we'll get three stockings in with same/similar names, see 'Joe, Zoe and Joe' in our Making up Gallery at www.jollyred.co.uk. But here's a more recent one, see if you can spot it, it's tough:

A trio of Patchwork Cats! I really like this design, I don't think it's been out of print since it purred its way into our lives in 2001. As the title suggests, it appeals not only to tapestry folk but to patchworkers and quilters too. There are so many interesting areas to stitch, you can pick and choose whether you want to do a 'busy' part, maybe the cat's body, or the border or the background depending on how you feel.

To me, Patchwork Cat is a good example of a design with built in 'TV area'. Whenever I'm designing a new tapestry I think about people who might be doing it for themselves in the future. They want to enjoy the process, not get bogged down in an area with masses of shading, six different greens that all look the same under artificial light (we've all been there - aargh!), or a huge soul-destroying expanse of one colour to stitch, *yawn*. One major consideration is that stitchers may well want to stitch at least part of their tapestry in front of the TV.

On the Patchwork Cat, the TV area is the area of dark bottle green with the turquoise hearts on around the cat him/herself. The idea is that if you plan to be doing your tapestry in front of your favourite TV programme, you can get everything ready for a perfect night of stitching & viewing by first stitching one of the busier areas then maybe one or two hearts in the background and then just filling in around the hearts with the background colour once your favourite programme appears. Remember to makle sure that your stitches goes in the same direction throughout, and when the car chase starts don't pull your wool through too tightly - keep an eye on your tension!

What reminded me about the Patchwork Cat and its suitability for TV stitching was the timing of the arrival of these three Cats. They came in after the May Bank Holiday, just after the whole country had been glued to their sofas watching the Royal Wedding!

Incidentally, here's how the lovely trio of Patchwork Cats turned out:

Each of them was made up in a different backing colour. Another good thing about Patchwork Cat - you can make it up with all sorts of different colours and it always looks fab. We can't go without the all-important side view, get ready!

Puppy Power! New Christmas Stocking

2011-05-25T10:39:00.002+01:00

Today is all about puppies. Our first visitor of the day, collecting her gorgeous Congratulations tapestry cushion, was talking proudly about her new Jack Russell pup, Doughnut. She had hoped to bring Doughnut over to meet Flik but had to leave her home because she is very little and hasn't had all her jabs yet.

There are however some puppies who will be making an appearance today, here's a bit of a preview:

It's our new 'Puppies' Christmas stocking! I've approved the artwork so it's all go with the printer now. I'm hoping to get the canvases in next week...but many years in the needlepoint business suggest that may be a little hopeful, especially with a Bank Holiday coming up. Let's all cross our fingers for June 7th.

In the next day or two our newsletter will go out to everyone on our email mailing list, with a picture of the complete Puppies stocking. Please send your details to kelly@jollyred.co.uk if you aren't on our mailing list and would like to be. We will send you news of new designs, discounts and offers and will never pass your details on to any other company. A full picture of the Puppies Stocking won't appear on our website until the kit is in stock - very soon!

Newsletter! Are you on the list?

2011-05-17T10:58:00.000+01:00

It's coming up to Newsletter time! Please forward your email address to kelly@jollyred.co.uk if you'd like to receive updates with special offers, new design updates, etc. We don't broadcast our offers over our website, and they usually only run for a couple of weeks at a time.

Don't miss out! x

Adding a name panel, step by step guide

2011-05-16T11:09:00.006+01:00

Last week the new series of The Apprentice started and I knew I was going to be hooked to the TV. I needed to have something to do, as I can't watch TV empty-handed, so decided to stitch another sample of 'Quilt Hearts' while watching the box. I had a bit of a motive, as I wanted to see for myself just how far the 8 skeins of wool in the kit would go and wanted to show stitchers how to add text for themselves, with a step by step guide. As a bonus, I'd have another sample of Quilt Hearts to make up in a new way, useful with a new catalogue on the horizon.

Our starter kits are very popular and I always explain to callers to Jolly Red that a name can be stitched above or below the design, and that you can add a striped/patterned border with the leftover wool. Just to give you the basic info, the starter kits have a main area of printed canvas (approx 4" x 4"), and this square is printed centrally on a piece of canvas which itself measures about 10" x 10". So that's quite a nice border all round the design to expand the design if you want to. There is an alphabet chart should you choose to add a name panel, again optional.

As the Wednesday Apprentice programme kicked off I'd almost finished stitching the printed area. Look at how much wool is left - loads!

Using the alphabet chart provided with the kit, I planned out 'Best Mum' on to the squared paper and started stitching it on. I must confess to not paying too much attention to the exact spacing of the words. I just wanted to get it done...and I was also captivated by the cringey goings-on on the telly. Once I realised that 'Best' was positioned slightly over to the left, I could have unpicked it but decided to go with the flow and see if I could make it look right in the end. I'd always recommend this relaxed approach...

I put two hearts to the right of 'Best' and just one in the other spaces. At this point I did a quick check on how much wool was still left. Quite a bit, and I saw that there was a lot of the red and the pink so decided that I'd use those for the border.

I decided to add side panels to the design to make it more of a square, making it up as I went along. When you're trying to use up all your leftover wool, the secret is not to use one colour in too big a block. Break the pattern up as much as you can and don't aim for symmetry, try to keep a relaxed feel to it.

I carried the pink & the red all around the outer edge for a nice border, to frame the design.

And we're there! Demonstrating that 8 skeins of wool go quite a long way, and also that you don't only have to put a child's name on one of our starter kits. Use your imagination, and above all have fun creating your own mini masterpiece.

It's worth mentioning that I used half cross stitch when stitching. I also used one of our 12" no sew frames, great for attaching your canvas very quickly as you just use the clips provided. There was some wool still leftover as you can see above, but I think sometimes it's important to know when to stop.

While I was stitching my Quilt Hearts, Flik was lying at the other end of the sofa, looking over in my direction every now and then to see if I was still sitting in 'his place'. It's my place and always has been, but Flik has taken a liking to it in recent months. Here's what happened every time I got up to take a picture, or when I went to make a cup of tea before the BBC2 follow-up programme came on. That dratted dog, he has defiance written all over his face!

During this week's Apprentice I'll be stitching a colour sample for a new design. I'll let you know how this goes, and also keep you updated on the battle for Sofa Supremacy.

Taking stock, talking shop, Christmas stockings

2011-05-11T13:22:00.000+01:00

What a difference a week makes in the tapestry world. Last Friday I was so worried because it seemed as though our new Christmas Stocking was going to take forever to appear, but now it seems that it is back on track. Happy days!

I know I always say it but I am very excited. This new design will herald the start of the new season. It might seem a bit odd for a Christmas product to be launched in May/early June but people do need time to stitch their stocking and have it ready to be made up by the end of the year.

We supply our kits to quite a few shops and it surprises me when stockists only order Christmas stocking kits from October - December. We are busy all year round with them and June tends to be the start of the very busy season. Incidentally, if you have a local shop that stocks tapestry kits, please do pass on these words - and I'd be happy to talk to the owner if necessary, they might be losing sales!

At the moment we're getting everything ready for photography of this and some of our other new kits so I must also use this opportunity to apologise if blog posts are a bit thin on the ground over the next few weeks. There is new packaging to sort out, wool quantities to check and then re-check, reference charts to produce...the list goes on.

I'll update this post as soon as I can with pictures of new designs and of course if you're on our mailing list you'll be getting a Newsletter soon.

In the meantime, I hope you're managing to get some tapestry or cross stitch done out in the garden. Happy stitching!

Stitching, Stretching, Posting, Stressing

2011-05-06T12:14:00.002+01:00

Ah, it's Friday. Another week has flashed by. The two Bank Holidays were wonderful. All that sunshine provided the perfect opportunity to stitch in the garden, but getting back to even a four day week has been a bit of a shock! Judging by the number of calls we've had this week requesting fabric samples or asking about prices for making up, I suspect that I wasn't alone in my alfresco activity. Lots of people have been finishing their tapestries, I am looking foward to seeing these creations! Fabric samples are already in the post for some of them.

Here's an idea of what else we've been up to this week. Early on in the week (I can't remember which day!) I took the scenic route - there is no other - to our cushion lady and collected a bumper batch of cushions, teacosies and Christmas stockings, to stuff with feather pads, wrap in pink tissue & bubblewrap then send back to their rightful homes. You might imagine that a big mailing of customer tapestries means that we can relax with the making up. Wrong...

The making up boards are now full again, and another batch of tapestries has since been delivered for making up. The system is working, all is well!

Above we have Tree of Life and a little glimpse of Autumn Leaves, side by side on one of the boards. We are hoping that the current batch dries quickly as some customers have just sent their work in and need it back quickly. We only got them in yesterday. Back by 20th May? Yikes, okay then!

Providing a distraction from the giddy world of tapestry, yesterday was also voting day. This is how it's done in Isle Brewers. 'Come along and vote and pick up some eggs at the same time'. It's this sort of approach to work and to life that makes me love Somerset so much.

Today we have been making up lots of starter kits as well as stockings and sampler tapestries. The shelves are looking a bit bare after the two holiday weekends and there's a bit of catching up to do.

On the secret side, our new designs are finally coming together. The most keenly awaited I would guess is our new Christmas stocking, which I am racing to get out as soon as possible. When I'm feeling a bit calmer, I'll tell you a funny story about the new Christmas stocking, but at the moment it isn't funny as I'm desperately trying to get it printed. There has been a hiccup shall we say, very diplomatically. I'm assured that the printing will be back on track *very soon*. We'll soon be ready with our latest Newsletter about new designs and recent goings on, so if you aren't on our mailing list for Newsletters please do send your email address so we can keep you updated.

At the last minute this afternoon I managed to get another new design ready to go off to be stitched. I am beside myself with excitement about it, and enjoyed showing off my stitched sample to one of our customers earlier when she came in to pick up her Patchwork Cat cushion. The design will be stitched by one of my very lovely ladies while she is on holiday, which makes me think - when's the end of May? Surely we must be due another holiday? Next week's five day week's going to be a killer!

A tale of two seahorses

2011-04-27T16:19:00.001+01:00

Time for an update on some of our recent making up service treasures, featuring our lovely A-Z Animals tapestry kits. One of our extremely prolific stitchers sent in her latest collection of tapestries, to be made up into cushions for a window seat in her home in London. Here the canvases are, fresh out of their box.

These four have been stitched each with one name looking big and bold. You can also use the smaller alphabet also supplied with the A-Z Animals kits to put in more details, such as a date of birth. Either way, the finished results always look great as you can see here!

As always with this customer, we were given free choice with the colours we used with the instructions that the finished results should be nice and bright, in 'our 3-colour way'. Here are the two 'S for Seahorse' tapestries, stretched, dried and made up:

The extra challenge as I saw it was to keep the two tapestries 'similar but different', and to maintain a nautical feel with the designs. Blue was obviously going to feature in the colour choices. Sadie's cushion has a lovely duck egg blue mitred border, bright blue piping and a fabulous raspberry/magenta backing. Sophie's has bright blue mitred edge, sandy yellow for the piping and a really nice soft blue for the backing. They will look gorgeous next to each other on their window seat!

I always really like the side views! I've already heard back from the customer, who is delighted with her latest batch of cushions. She's busily stitching Teddy's Garden while I chase up 'T for Tiger', the next design she'll be stitching in the A-Z Animals series. I can't do the designs fast enough...

Busy weekend in the garden (for once!)

2011-04-26T19:49:00.009+01:00

What a wonderful long weekend we've just had. I was determined to do a lot in the garden as last week I got pretty fed up gazing out at the sunshine from our Isle Brewers hideaway. It was time to be out and enjoying the sun for myself!
Mrjollyred was also cross about having been being cooped up indoors too much recently, and keen to get some outdoor jobs done. So while I set about the digging and planting up of our second raised bed (spuds, lettuces & flower mixes from half empty packets and others in ancient-looking envelopes) I let him get on with his slightly bigger job of assembling our Sienna Garden Arbour, from @GardenTimber (Twitter folk and real too!). I'd kept the arbour in storage at Jolly Red's HQ until we got a nice weekend to put it up, wishing away the cold weather until our longed-for nice spell arrived. And here it was!

First Flik had to check that all the bits were there.

They were!

Mrjollyred getting stuck in!

Before long it's taking shape. We have a seat!

Wow! It's standing. The excitement mounts. In well under four hours from start to finish the arbour was assembled. It's so sturdy, mrjollyred was very impressed. Right, you've seen enough of it on the boring old patio, there must be a better way of showing it off...

That's better! One arbour - fabulous seat for relaxing on and having a drink, and a lovely display area for all your tapestry cushions. It does have one other important use - it provides welcome shade and an extra play area for old duffer Jack Russells!

Mrjollyred and I are looking forward to next week's Bank Holiday when we might actually get to sit on our fab new arbour. A big thank you to @GardenTimber, and cheers!