Snapdragon's garden

How to make a dogwood heart

In the Workroom  - How to make a dogwood heart

 Last month I led some workshops at the Country Living Fair in Glasgow making these pretty dogwood hearts.  They were so successful that I decided to do a step by step here.

You need a wire frame.

  Some stems of dgwood, willow or silver birch and 6 bits of thin wire.

 

Select 4 straightish pieces of dogwood and jam 2 on each side of square at the bottom of the wire frame.

Flatten the sticks against the frame and wire securely.

 bend the sticks round the top and wire again so you get a heart shape.

 

Then use the rest of the dogwood to bind round and round the heart - jam the ends securely into the frame at the bottom and them wrap the sticks round.  Be careful to keep the 2 sides even.

 

 Keep going round and round until you have a chunky heart and can't see too much of the frame.  If it turns triangular wait to the end and then force the top centre down to make a heart shape again.

  I have a pack or two of the heart wire frames here and am happy to post them out.

They are £2.80 each including postage- SORRY - SOLD OUT

Halloween

Its lovely when halloween falls on a Saturday.

We shall actually be able to have a lovely meal together - lighting up out temporary dining area with lanterns and candles - without having to fit around Brownies, horse riding or guitar.

I am so looking forward to it.

These pumpkin badges are now all sold out - but I did save a couple for the girls.

There is a give away on my facebook fan page - and one more day to sign up as a "fan" and get entered into the draw for a button badge of your choice.

Keeping it short but spreading it about a bit.

Life in the workroom is as busy as busy can be at the moment - re-orders are coming in faster than I had anticipated and we are all working flat out - sewing, pressing, cutting, snipping, packing, posting - we look a bit like one of those fast motion films.  All we need is some Benny Hill music.

It means that there simply isn't much spare time for blogging - I think that for the next couple of months it is going to be a photo and a couple of sentences.

Bizarrely - despite having less time to spend on the computer - I am posing in more different places.  Twitter especially suits my time constraints - giving me the chance to fire off 140 character messages while gulping coffee or printing out invoices.  I have been pleasantly surprised by how many bloggers there are on twitter - many whose blogs have been discontinued due to time constraints - find me HERE. I hadn't expected to find such a warm friendly community.

I have also expanded my Facebook page so that it is now a Snapdragon page where I can put bits of information - new products, free tickets, events, etc. etc.  I'm not exactly settled on how I will use it but at the moment there is a giveaway going on - become a "fan" (hate that word) and you get entered into the draw for a button badge of your choice.  Come and see me HERE.

The pics today are of the Fennel design in 2 different guises - the top one a mirror - the bottom one a lavender cushion.

Something special

As well as having my own website I sell on the Not on the High Street site - Rather than just repeat what you find on the main Snapdragon site I decided to concentrate on my personalised things there- whether it is mirrors with names on the pouches or notebooks embroidered with pictures of  special people, pets and cars.

Last month I received a commission from a woman.  She wanted an A4 notebook with a picture of a viking caravan and Saab on it an an anniversary present for her husband.

It was a really fun project to do - involving surreptitious photographs of said vehicles and a bit of to-ing and froing about colours/text/setting.

 

This was the final version.
Last week I sent it off and got a lovely thank you note by return "Thank you, thank you, thank you  :0)  Our notebook arrived safely this morning and it is even more fantastic than it looked in the pictures.  I couldn't contain my excitement last night and I got Tim to search on NOTH for caravan items; his face was a picture when he saw 'Mr Bus' and the caravan on the screen!"

I have always made personalised things for my girls and for friends - it reminded me how special they are.

Expanding

Today is an important day for Snapdragon.  In one fell swoop we are doubling the size of the workforce.  I had interviews for a new member of staff on Friday and 2 of the candidates were so impressive in different ways that i couldn't choose between them.

As their skill sets are quite different, I decided to employ both.

So now I am tring to boost up the wood-burner to give both Kit and Emma a warm welcome.

Part of the aim of taking Snapdragon away from the kitchen table was to create local employment, so I am very pleased.  I shall still be doing the freehand embroidery but I shall have help with the preparation (Kit), the sewing up (Isobel),  & the invoicing, packing and dispatch (Emma) - while outside Fiona keeps everything going, planning to be open to he public again next year.

Its all a bit scary though - better keep those orders coming in . . .

Jam notebooks

This afternoon I have been making up piles of Jam notebooks, one of the most popular products at Top Drawer and increasingly I find I am drawn to the beauty of neat piles of things waiting to be sewn, waiting to be trimmed, waiting to be parceled up.

This is a pile of cut out notebook covers - sandwiches of fulled Yorkshire wool and vintage Indian cotton.  I love the fuzzy edges and the layers - like all those mattresses belonging to the Princess with the pea.

Here is a more conventional view - with a better look at the printed cotton - and the old Laura Ashley ticking jam-pot lid.
Now - having sandwiched this making in between running eldest into Glasgow for a singing lesson and house painting -  I am away to have a shower before heading out to a ceilidh in the village.
Happy Saturday to you all.

Obvious

This is the workbench in the cabin.

Stacks of flower mirrors.  It became obvious today that, despite our attempts to build up stock before going down to the Top drawer trade fair, we way underestimated.
Still -now  we are into the groove.  We are cutting and sewing, making and packing . . . I am loving it.

I love piles of things don't you? 
J x

Still here and beavering away

Each day here seems to bring new challenges at the moment.
Until yesterday I was focused on getting my stand for Top Drawer sorted out, painted and packed off to Mclaggan Smith who are minding my pallet on the way to London.  I spent my day worrying about paint and whether I would be able to fit the pieces of stand in the car and whether I would be able to get to Alexandria and offload the pallets in time to head off to a funeral in the Borders.  i worried about all sorts of things and of course it all went fine (with a bit of car loading help from Euan and a LOT of pallet packing help from the team at Mclaggan Smith.)

Today, as orders are coming in from the catalogues that were sent out on Monday, I realise that it is time to worry about building up stock!

This is one of our old seedtrays with bits for badges and mirrors - I didn't think that the pink would work for chickens or the dogs - but it really does.
Anyway - as they say - onwards and upwards.

Westie badges

People tend to ask me whether I mind having gone from making a few of an item to making hundreds.
Before I embarked on this wholesale lark I thought the answer would be that yes it was driving me mad.
But you know - thats not the case - I love making multiples.  I don't know why, but I suspect that it is having things in bulk; piles of mirrors, heaps of badges.  I like making multiples but I like packing up multiples even better!
So here are the doggy badges all in a heap.

My parents have had Westies since I can remember - Suki, Sammy, Chips and now Lucy and Josie; I always like them best when they fill out a bit and get middle aged spread - lovely chunky dogs to sit on your knee.
I got a few e-mails about whether they are for sale - well they are and they are on the website but I understand why people might not want to venture there as its a mess.
So I'll pop on a button here- they are £3.95 including postage in the EU - e-mail me if you ant them sent fourther afild, its an extra 40p.

What background colour would you like?

beige red green

Adding to the stash.

I get a lot of e-mails about the fabrics that I use and where I find them.  It is a question that I find very difficult to answer for I don't tend to find them, they tend to find me.  Somehow fabrics are attracted into my sewing room without much effort on my part at all.

Taking one of the storage boxes at random there is some 1960s pink cotton from my Mum's sewing room (presently being cleared out); an unpicked red boiled wool coat of mine that shrunk in the wash; a 1970s indian print table cloth I had that developed a ketchup stain; blue silk from a bridesmaid's dress I had as a colour swatch for flowers; scraps of Titley and Marr curtain material I used to use as bag linings and some Victorian tartan silk, carefully saved from a disintegrating shawl picked out of a bin at an antique fair.

The latter - which is now no more than some fragile strips - finds perfect use in tartan jackets for westies on brooches.

The dog itself is made from offcuts from the wool left over from notebooks etc.  I love that everything I make has some kind of story and I love that fabrics find me.  At times it seems like my space will be take over by the scraps waiting to be used.  But then . . . if I didn't have so many bits I wouldn't be able to lay my hands on "just the right piece" for a project.