H's Sew Photo Hop on Instagram

This month I have been taking part in House of Pinheiro's Sew Photo Hop which has been a month of Instagramming everyday.  It's been a challenge to find a picture for each day's word, but a fun challenge.  It's been great to see what everyone else was getting up to too.  Getting inventive with translating the days tasks into pictures shows all the sides of how I am creative as some of mine were not strictly sewing related.

So from the top left picture it all starts with the list for the month and then each days goes from left to right.

Day 1 - Hello (Introduce yourself) - Just me, this picture was from when I was working in London on the canal side in Kings Cross.

Day 2 - Can't/ won't live without - My sewing box from Sammy.

Day 3 - Colourful - This theatre was made by children at a local primary school for a project I run at work.

Day 4 - Work/play - The blog - always work and play!

Day 5 - Silhouette - My giraffe looks like a cat in the silhouette!

Day 6 - Pattern that changed my life - this purse I bought at a vintage fair which is pretty much the same as one I found in my late grandma's belongings!  We were clearly more alike than I thought.

Day 7 - Sew up close - Putting some darts in a dress to alter it.

Day 8 - Sewing playlist - My eclectic taste in music is always interesting.

Day 9 - Stash - Just a few of the fat quarters I have.

Day 10 - Would exchange closet with - Drew Barrymore, I want to be her!

Day 11 - Bucket list - I don't have one so found this quote instead.

Day 12 - Motivation - Writing notes and this quote!

Day 13 - Sewing space - My sewing space is also my dining room table and workspace in general.

Day 14 - Style - I love the Hoxton Hotel's style - totally me.

Day 15 - Secret corner of shame - underneath my dining room table/workspace is a world of non sorted shame!

Day 16 - Tiny vs Big - Loved this shot at Waterloo station - everyone looks so small.
Day 17 - Proudest Achievement - My friends, my own place, my work and my nieces.
Day 18 - Sewing resolution - To actually make up the patterns I have.
Day 19 - Boldest Fabric - This used to be my Mum's dress, now a skirt.  Love the print.
Day 20 - Learning & Practicing - I love to learn new skills, this was Espadrilles attempt at The Makery in John Lewis, London.
Day 21 - Shades of summer - Bubble friday always happens at work in the summer, makes the summer.
Day 22 - Last thing I made - I made this papercut for work as I am doing a workshop on it.
Day 23 - Favourite sewing technique - I love a straight stitch.
Day 24 - Worst part of sewing - Realising your bobbin thread is no longer there after doing a whole set of stitching!
Day 25 - Behind the seams - The first dress I ever made! Simplicity Pattern 3833.
Day 26 - Labour of love - My sari from my brother's wedding 8 years ago to be made into the Anna Dress.
Day 27 - It's been a while - since I had seen my nieces - now rectified!
Day 28 - Trims & Haberdashery - Bias binding and zips from Sew Crafty.
Day 29 - Eye Level - Making some frozen inspired cupcakes for my niece's first birthday.
Day 30 - Favourite Era - I love the 1960's and 1970's so please don't make me choose!
Day 31 - Last thing I bought - This massive crochet hook for using with my Wool and the Gang t-shirt yarn.

There is a bonus play for tomorrow too of Buttons or Zippers!  Let's see what I get up to then.  Which one to choose!?!

Did you do the Sew Photo Hop?  How did you find it?  I loved checking out what everyone else was doing
and there are so many great new sewers out there to follow on my Instragram.

Hope your having a great Bank Holiday Monday - even if it is a little soggy!
H

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Review: Printing My Own Fabric with By Hand London

Last year we started stocking By Hand London patterns at Sew Crafty, I loved the unique styles they offered and the packaging is to die for (I am a sucker for good packaging).  A month or so later I supported their Kickstarter campaign to start a new branch of their business, bespoke digital fabric printing. A few weeks ago I got down to designing and printing some fabric for the first time.

I thought it would be a great idea to share my experience with you guys, *spoiler alert* I am a little bit addicted to designing my own fabric and have lots more designs planned!

You will need to start by creating a digital design, you can do this by scanning a drawing or creating digital artwork through Photoshop or other image software. I created this simple geometric design in Photoshop.

Once you have decided on your design you would upload it to the By Hand London website and start laying it out

You can choose different tiling options and enlarge or reduce your image to get the best look for your design. This view shows my design over a fat quarter with the smaller tiled option.

And below is the design at the biggest tiled option again over a fat quarter.

I found the website really simple to operate and easy to experiment with tiling and size options for my fabric. At the final stage you can choose the amount you want to buy and if you choose to, view your fabric over a metre area. 

Now some of you may think that £19 per metre is a lot of money for fabric, but if you think how much you pay for normal designer cotton prints for instance about £12-18 per metre? Getting your very own design digitally printed onto high quality cotton is a very good price.

I was so happy when my fabric arrived, I am totally in love with the print and the colours were just as I had imagined them to be, they are a very good match for the colours I chose on my computer screen. The quality of the fabric is just lovely and the printing is crisp and clean.

I said at the beginning that I was in love with designing fabric and I am totally in love, I am starting a sketch book just for fabric designs. I would absolutely recommend By Hand London for fabric printing in the UK. The process was fun and easy. The results are brilliant and the quality is beautiful. I can't wait to make my fabric into the skirt I have in mind for it, I will share when its ready.

I hope that has made you excited to have a go at designing your own fabric, Have you ever done anything like this? Are you waiting for your delivery? Let us know if you love By Hand London as much as we do!

Have a great weekend
Sammy xxx



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Makers Month Giveaway! (CLOSED)

Hey all, by now all the excitement of our Makers Month has been and gone :(  But we have been able to feature some amazing British Designer/Makers and some other cool brands along the way. We thought, what better way to round off the month than with a Giveaway. You could win all of this...

The Learn to Sew with Lauren Book - from our post on the 3rd September

 Charlotte Skirt Pattern from By Hand London - from our post on the 19th September

Fat Quarters from Dashwood Studios (Cable Cozy tutorial)

 and Liberty (Elbow Patches tutorial)

 Cloud Brooch by TigerLilly Quinn

All you need to do is tell us your favourite British Designer/Maker in the comments below and all this could be yours!

Don't forget to leave your email address in the comment and we can contact you if you are our winner!

Competition closes at midnight (UK time) on Friday 10th October and is open Internationally, so everyone can benefit from our best of British selection.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Lots of Love
H and Sammy xxx

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Makers Month: By Hand London

Today we want to talk about an independent, British company that we adore! Why do we love this company? Well, it is run by three super stylish ladies with tonnes of talent and vision. Two years ago they started a company and launched a kick-ass dress pattern range and with the help of a Kickstarter campaign are now embarking on bringing 'print your own designs' digital fabric printing right here in Great Britain. What is not to love!?

This photo from 'By Hand London' taken by Richard Round Turner.

By Hand London was created and is run by the gorgeous Charlotte, Elisalex and Victoria. The trio based in London create patterns based on classic silhouettes, uniquely named after the stylish ladies they know and admire. 

 ''We celebrate making, individual style and creative women, designing for those who love to dress up, stand out and customise their own wardrobe''

We took some time earlier in the week to have a chat with them about their experience with crowd funding program Kickstarter and how it has helped them achieve the dream of producing their fabric line and letting their customers create their own designs too. 

When did the idea for a fabric line become the next step for By Hand London, or was it always part of the plan?

It definitely was not on the agenda when we first launched, but was quickly established as Phase 2 just over a year ago when we had started to get into the swing of producing patterns. It seemed like a logical, and very exciting step - and we became all the more eager to get it off the ground as we saw companies like Spoonflower in the US doing so well.

What made you choose Kickstarter/crowd-funding rather than searching out private investors?

The wonderful thing about crowd funding is that it allows small companies to test the waters with a new (and very expensive) master plan. Just the fact that we made our target, shows us that there’s a big market for a print-on-demand fabric service and this will hopefully build our company to a point where we might be more attractive to investors. Needless to say, as a small company the last thing we want to do now is sign away all the equity! Crowd funding also serves as an indispensable PR tool and reaches out to a huge amount of people in anticipation of the Big Master-plan.

What are the main things you have learnt from the experience of using crowd funding?

Ummm…. Mainly that a good supply of Valium is definitely in order to keep the mini heart attacks at bay! Just joking - no Valium for us, but not joking about the mini heart attacks! The 30 day period that our campaign was live was possibly the most tense month of our lives - and this “Will we get it? Won’t we get it??” anxiety is completely unavoidable with an all-or-nothing crowd funding platform like Kickstarter. The only way we got through it was by keeping busy - hustle, hustle, hustle! Stay positive, stay proactive and if it all gets too much - take a well deserved break. Do everything in your power not to let the stress taint your working environment. It’s all about morale!

Is there anything you would have done differently?

Loads! We got so caught up in the fun of making the video and planning the launch that we may have run out of time to do some the more obvious things, like prepare press releases! Once it all kicked-off (‘scuse the pun) we were kind of left scrambling to actually let people know what we were up to! All’s well that ends well, though - despite our lack of forward planning we still made our goal and more! Phew!

What exciting things should we be looking out for from you girls in the future? 

Ooooh where do I begin?! The fabric printing will be very exciting and we’ve got loads of amazing artists and designers creating bespoke designs for us, as well as some fun fabric-related projects lined up too. We’ve also got five killer new patterns in the works, a DIY Weddings series for the blog, among other things. One thing’s for sure, life certainly won’t be boring here at BHL HQ over the coming months!

Both H and I really admire these girls passion and drive. They are super role-models for our industry and a great example of what can be achieved with a little style and a lot of determination. I contributed to their Kickstarter campaign and literally can't wait to see what these girls do next.

Want to find out even more about By Hand London head to their website, where you can also buy their stunning range of dress patterns. We also stock the full range at Sew Crafty, and they will be available on our online store when it opens soon.

Have you made any of the girls gorgeous patterns up? Do add a link in the comments below to pictures or blog posts so we can see how you got on.

Are you off to the Handmade Fair this weekend?? Let us know how you got on over on Twitter or Facebook.

Sammy xxx

Watch out for the last Who's Who of Makers Month next week if you like a bit of fabric printing.

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