As many of you know, I love all things sewing and embroidery! I’m always keen to develop new skills and learn new stitches (I seem to get stuck with split stitch sometimes!). For Christmas I received a beautiful teapot sewing kit designed by Nancy Nicholson (thank you Helen and Keith!) and I finished it yesterday, so I thought I’d do a little review of it here.

The kit is really well-designed and would appeal to anyone who enjoys sewing – it’s a great introduction to new stitches if you’re a beginner, and is a good way of putting your skills into practice if you have more experience. Nancy has designed the kit so that you can practice the stitches on the fabric along the lines of the helpful diagrams that show you how to stitch.

Once you have stitched on the practice panel, you can keep this forever in a sample book or your sewing notebook, to remind you of how to do the stitches. This is such a good idea – I’m forever forgetting things if I don’t practice, so this will be really useful! I’ve learnt how do do some new stitches here, and have revisited some older ones too. Couching stitch was new to me, but it is really effective.

The kit comes in a lovely little bag which can be embroidered as well – what a sweet idea!

Another great thing about this kit is that you can quite easily put it down and come back to it again, so I’ve really enjoyed doing little bits of it on an evening. I think I must have started doing it about 10 days ago – I’m working on the bag now that I’ve finished!

You can simply cut out the finished embroidery and frame it, or use the panel for a cushion or another project if you wish. I’m going to frame it and hang it up in our new kitchen when we get it done later this year.

You can buy this kit (and other lovely ones too) through Nancy’s website – she is happy to take custom orders and also has a lovely blog too!

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There hasn’t been a huge amount of crafting going on here this week, but this is for an important reason: I was sorting out my embroidery threads. I used to keep them in a little bag, and would do that thing where you try and pull out a colour but end up with a handful of tangled cotton! Argh! So I decided to put all of my colours onto card bobbins.

A simple task, you might think. But I also decided to make the card bobbins myself – the Yorkshirewoman in me just wouldn’t let me buy them when I have tonnes of card in my craft cupboard. So that added more time! I also had more thread than I thought, partly because Tom’s aunt gave me a wonderful supply that she doesn’t need any more. Once I had started, it was one of those things that I just had to finish!

I’m so pleased with it now, and relieved that I don’t have to do any more! At least it should be an easier job when I buy any more colours. Not that I should need to for a while! I organised the box in dark-light shades of each colour, and I just love the effect. I must start a new sewing project now!

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Today’s post is a wonderful DIY tutorial: how to line a vintage suitcase. I bought this gorgeous vintage teal suitcase last year with the intention of re-lining it – in fact, I looked at my original post about it and realised that I got it in March! I had a bit of practice at re-vamping a suitcase when I made my travelling craft suitcase, but that was made from a new case rather than a vintage one. So this was new territory for me and I really didn’t want to mess it up! I spent ages looking for the perfect fabric, and eventually found this tape measure fabric on Ebay.

If you want to have a go at this yourself, you’ll need the following:

A vintage suitcase
Some fabric for the lining
Some ribbon to compliment the fabric
Paper to make the templates
Mod podge
Fabric glue
A paintbrush
A pencil and scissors

Step 1

Place the paper inside the lid of the suitcase and draw around the edges. Cut around the lines and double-check that the template is the right size! Repeat this with the base and sides, and with any extra pieces that you may need.

Step 2

Carefully remove any fabric or paper within the suitcase (I couldn’t get the paper out of the base or lid because they were sewn in below the trim around the edges, so I removed what I could!). Then wipe clean the suitcase with some antibacterial spray, making sure it is dry before you stick anything in.

Step 3

Lay out the lining fabric and pin the templates, before cutting out the pieces. Press the fabric to get rid of any creases.

Step 4

Next, starting with the lid, place the fabric inside the suitcase and trim off any excess. I made sure that the fabric covered up the ugly black trim, but left lots of the teal on show (any rough edges will be covered up with the ribbon later, but try to keep it as even as possible at this stage).

Step 5

Using a thin layer of mod podge, glue small sections at a time – it dries pretty quickly and doing it in small sections means that you can flatten it out much easier too!

Step 6

Next, brush some mod podge around the tops of the sides of the suitcase. Carefully place the side pieces in, smoothing out the fabric as you go. Continue around the bottom and cut two slits in the fabric in each corner to be able to fit it in. Trim any excess overlap, fold over to neaten and then glue.

Step 7

Repeat step 4 with the base of the suitcase. Then, using the fabric glue stick the ribbon around the edges of the lid and the two edges in the base (this velvet ribbon I’ve used here comes from RE in Corbridge).

Step 8

The final pieces from me to stick in were the pieces that support the lid – I used mod podge to secure these. The rectangular piece at the front has some thin card sandwiched in the middle to give it more support.

Ta-dah! That’s it! Now it just has to dry completely before I can put some of my fabric stash in it. I love the contrast between the fabric and the teal velvet ribbon and I’m really pleased that I didn’t wreck this lovely suitcase!

Post updated 14th August 2016.

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I’ve never really got into ‘scrapbooking’ as a thing, but recently I’ve discovered that scrapbook paper is brilliant for projects where you need a small print. The first project that I did using scrapbook paper was to line the insides of my wooden drawers, and I’ve been thinking of new things to do with it ever since! I always send thank you cards for Christmas and my birthday, so I made these cards and I’m really pleased with how they turned out!

I found these Mambi cards and Seen and Noted scrapbook papers in TKMaxx (they always have good bargains in there!) and thought that they would be perfect together! I decided to use my stamps again for these cards, as it’s always good to have an excuse to be able to use them

The first step was to match the cards and papers and then stamp ‘thank you’ on the paper.

I stamped on four different designs of paper, but used blue ink for each one.

Once dry, I cut out a rectangle and then cut two strips of double-sided tape to stick on the back.

Then it can be stuck to the card. Ta-dah!

After I made the cards, I decided to make some envelopes to go with them using this funky paper!

There was one problem though – I realised after I’d made them that the Mambi cards are too big for my envelopes…argh! So I sent the card and envelope in a bigger one – I didn’t want them to go to waste! If you’d like to make your own envelopes, check out my tutorial!

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