Sew Fabulous Fabric and a competition...

In November 2006 Alice and I exhibited as 'folkydokee handmade' at Country Living Magazines Christmas Fair at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London. We spent a fair bit of money on this show to achieve a warm friendly little shop like space with a counter made by the lovely Rod (my other half), a wooden style floor, a gold painted border a with Merry Christmas stencilled greeting and a mock up mantlepiece where we hung our handmade Christmas stockings.

Country Living Christmas 2006

As many of you who do these kind of shows will know it is very hard to have space to store everything, put samples of all the product ranges on display and to also make the space welcoming and uncluttered and importantly fit us both on the stall (we come as a pair!) and allow space for folk to come in and browse.

As a small company we could only ever afford a small space but the long thin ones always worked best for us as you get a lot of wall space to hang products and still have room for browsers to come in and have a closer look. We achieved what we had hoped for and i think it was all worth the extra time and money spent as we received lots of lovely comments about our little space. I feel it also was an important element in why we were approached at that show by the lovely Ali from the publishers David and Charles. This meeting was the start of an exciting collaboration for Alice and I which has now reached completion.

Ali, who had been drawn to our stall and our recycled textile products asked us if we had ever considered writing a book. We had both toyed with this idea before having both had teaching backgrounds, but had never really pursued it.... (i secretly always thought i would write a self help book.. god knows i am an expert as i have read so many.. but that's another story). We arranged to meet to discuss the possibility of this after the Show.

The next stage was for us to submit a synopsis of the structure that a book would take and a list of projects. We had to wait a while to see if our proposal would pass various stages, costings.. etc. Finally we got the go ahead and then began... With the sad loss of Alice's baby Poppy in mid pregnancy, working towards Hampton Court Flower Show and with the Summer Holidays in between, we certainly had our work cut out...

Creating the projects for the book was such fun and the process of writing the text a real creative challenge which we both loved. Alice and I have different styles so we were constantly editing what each other had written. The book contains beautiful illustrations which accompany our step by steps drawn by Helen Philipps and for the project photography we were so lucky to work with the wonderful Simon Whitmore. These photo shoots were tiring but great fun.



The book was finished back in April and we received a copy in July.... this is me (photo taken by my 10 year old) with my copy... i could not stop jumping up and down i was so excited... i am on the phone to Alice sharing the excitement.

Here is a little sample of some of the projects included in the book, having been created from a mix of recycled fabrics, natural fabrics, remnants and scraps as is our style....

Simon Whitmore's photographs

a full contents list can be found by clicking on the book cover
in the side bar and following the search in book facility.

To celebrate the launch of Sew Fabulous Fabric I wanted to run a little competition open to all bloggers as as thank you for all your support and comments over my last (almost 100) posts.
Our publishers, David and Charles have kindly given me a few free copies of 'Sew Fabulous Fabric' so, these are up for grabs. You don't have to answer any questions to enter or live in the uk as we will post the book worldwide (please note that it is written in English), but what we would ask is that if you win you could write up a little review of the book and post it on your blog.

Our books official publish date is 18th September, although i understand that it is now in stock, so i will do the draw on the 18th September at 9am. Good luck.
ginny and alice xx

p.s. a thank you message for Diana from Pebbledash who sent me one of her wonderful handprinted cards to wish Alice and I good luck with the book launch... so lovely of you, thank you so much x