I've started preparing for my mini exhibition of mini cushions that is going to be taking place at The Beaney museum in Canterbury next month. The mini cushions will be going into glass cabinets but need to be 'free-standing' so I've been making a variety of display stands for them this week. I'm grouping the mini cushions into themes for the display so there'll be a Wildlife theme and Around the World and I'll also include my Flowers of the Month collection. The rest I still need to plan out.
Creating the stands gave me an idea that my customers might want to follow, so I created a little video on how to make one of the stands and provided the video and template on my website. Now people stitching my mini cushions can display them wherever they want on the stand without having to find somewhere/something to lean them against.
Buttons and Patchwork
My latest mini cushion features lots of bright and pastel colours mixed together to form a kind of Patchwork design. I took my inspiration for this one from some vintage fabrics that I saw in a magazine. I love cutting out pictures of fabrics, interiors and flowers that I find in homestyle magazines and keeping them in my scrapbooks so I can dive into them and create new mini cushions using different combinations of the patterns and colours that I find. For this design, I thought of adding various coloured buttons to really give the design a country home feel full of country craft ideas and I named it 'Patchwork Pieces'.
I always like to have a little offer running on my website at Christmas time and this year I may have gone a little crazy because I'm giving away a mini cushion kit FREE with every order of £25 or more (exc. p&p). Each time an eligible order is placed one of the six mini cushions shown below will be packed in the order for free. And if more than one eligible order is placed by the same person they'll receive a different free kit from the set of six. I'm thinking I may be regretting coming up with this offer with the amount of free kits I'm sending out, but hey, I like to think of it as a thank you and a Christmas treat all rolled into one. This offer ends midnight on Tuesday 24th December 2013.
As my Henry VIII and Elizabeth I mini cushion kits have been such a hit since I released them, I thought I would produce a little gift set made up of items featuring these two designs. The set consists of a coaster, keyring, lavender-scented sachet and a notebook and is all bundled together into one neat package which would make a lovely stocking filler gifts for fans of the Tudor period. It's priced at £10 (+p&p) and the link to the set is here: Tudor Gift Set
Customer comments
I've been getting some lovely feedback from my customers lately about the contents of my kits and the enjoyment they get from stitching the designs. During the Summer I started converting my charts from one page charts to larger charts that are spread across two A4 pages, with a two row greyed-out overlap so they are much clearer to see and follow. I also include the symbols next to the shade numbers on the card sorter which carries the ready-sorted threads, so I hope I've made it even easier and more enjoyable for even beginners to stitch my designs.
I'm always happy to receive comments or questions about my designs and kits so anyone can get in touch with me via my website. And that just leaves me to add a little reminder that I am a nominee in the 'small stitch business' category of The British Craft Awards 2014. Voting forms can be found in The World of Cross Stitching and Cross Stitch Crazy magazine and there is also a website where votes in all of the stitch categories can be placed: http://www.britishcraftawards.com. Voting closes 20th December.
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