Hello all, as I write this newsletter I am home alone (well except for the dog) for the first time since Christmas. Both my children are finally back at school. My son Jamie has been going in to school on and off to help with COVID testing, but Poppy, my youngest, returned for the first time today.
I can not believe it's almost a year, since COVID changed our lives. Both mum and I are so very grateful for all your support in this unprecedented time and for keeping us SO busy! We are extremely proud that we have kept up with your orders and all our subscription parcels have been posted on schedule.... but I must confess that we have been flagging this last month...I don't know about you, but we have both found lockdown in the winter more unsettling and challenging than the first lockdown last year. However, there is much excitement and good news here at Pretty Fabrics and Trims HQ.....
It had always been the plan that at some stage Andy, my husband would join the business, however in view of how busy we have been and the future plans we have, we have brought things forward and Andy will be joining the business next week....woohoo! Andy spent 30 years serving in the RAF and subsequently has continued working in the aviation business but as a civilian, so it's certainly going to be a change for him. But as regular readers will know, as a family business, he's been helping us out when he could for a number of years and he is really looking forward to this new chapter!
We're very conscious that no business can stand still, so we wanted to share today, some of our hopes and plans for our business. One of the things that we have been asked for on a regular basis, is video tutorials to support the existing 'little happy' tutorials on the blog. With this in mind, Andy and I enrolled on a fabulous film making course in January and we have been busy filming every thing that moves in our house..... who knew that pouring a cup of tea and slowing it down could be so much fun!
We will be releasing our first series of 'little happy' video tutorials this Spring which we will be sharing for free on our You Tube channel. We're starting with Hand Embroidery and I plan to work through all my 'go to' stitches. The grand plan is, that we will eventually be making short films for all my favourite 'happy stitches'... think English Paper Piecing, Needleturn Applique and Hand Quilting. We're going to keep them all deliberately quite short, with one stitch covered per video, so they are there for you as a quick reference point should you need it and you can expect lots of slow motion and close up shots! Dec 21 Edited to add: after a whirl of a year the first videos are now available on our You Tube channel here.
To support the new video series, I am currently writing a little happy 'booklet' of sorts. It will include instructions for all my favourite hand embroidery stitches, included with it will be a 'practice' Embroidery Stitch sampler, which is pre-printed on to our lovely embroidery linen, which we use in all our kits, plus embroidery threads.
I am also working on second new kit which will be for a pretty filled heart embroidery, this will have everything that you need to turn the completed heart embroidery in to a sweet little wall hanging, including a lovely wire display hanger.
You will see me working on the sampler in the 'little happy' hand embroidery video tutorials.
As I am sure you can appreciate there is a lot of work to do to make all these things happen, so I'm afraid pre-orders are not available just yet. But, we will as soon as we have a realistic and achievable completion date for everything, let you know. Equally, I'll let you know when the first 'little happy' video is available to view.
Gosh... I could go on for ages and I haven't even mentioned festive boxes...but even I, as a girl who loves to plan, thinks March is far too early to be having such thoughts!
