Tutorials for Christmas No.6 ... Bauble

The Bauble, all made around a polystyrene ball. satisfying in extreme to push pins into polystyrene! All instructions, templates, and stitch guides available on the website http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/baubletut.html

Tutorials for Christmas No.5 ... Toadstool

Well you know how I like fungus! Very easy little project and you could make it in lots of different sizes.
All instruction, templates, and stitch guides available on website http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/toadstooltut.html

Tutorials for Christmas No 4 ... Heart

And here is the heart, easy to make for friends and family. Instructions, stitch guides and templates all available on the website http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/hearttut.html

Tutorials for Christmas No3 ... Little House

Little house decoration, very simple to make. All templates, instructions and stitch guides available on the website http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/housetut.html

Tutorials for Christmas No2 ... DRUM

The Drum, made using a milk bottle cap! Templates, instructions and stitch guides all available on the website http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/drumtut.html

Tutorials for Christmas No1. ... BIRD

Here they are, hope you enjoy making them. Templates, embroidery stitch guides and instructions available on the website http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/birdtut.html

Giant Puff Ball

Sliced just after picking

preparation with good butter salt and pepper

Frying with the bacon

Consumption ... satisfaction

I found these photos on the camera today ... completely forgot to post them though the event was quite spectacular! We almost fell over this giant on a walk down a familiar route one weekend in late September. It was as big, no bigger than a football and weirdly attached to the soil by the smallest of stalks. looking rather like it had been blown up from the earth ... I was very excited to scoop it up and made a sling for it out of my jumper, which smelt heavenly all the way home. It squeaks when it is cut like cutting polystyrene ... and the aroma is indescribably delicious. Butter, bacon, salt and pepper great slices of it on good bread ... we had risotto too, and stuffed a squash with it. It was handed out to friends and kept me in food for a week. A huge soft cloud of a thing. Delicious.

Teaching ... Christmas decorations

 Here are some pictures of the teaching I have been doing recently at ... The Sewing Place  and at Hoop, where the course continues each week (6 in all, two more to go)
It has been great to work with everyone and we have had lots of laughter and creativity. The Christmas decorations will be available on the website to download, next week. The crowdfunding has begun with 5 backers so far! I can't wait to begin The Thread club in the new year ... if we reach the target it will make everything speed ahead!
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/nancy-nicholson-design/

The little felt bird decoration and all the variables made by students ...

The Toadstool decoration and a the Kit bag embroidered using thread spun by the student, wound onto a beautiful old wooden spool

The original designs for the classes ... patterns coming soon

More Teaching ...

The Christmas decorations course at Hoop ... tea, sewing, chatter, happiness.

The Advent calendar course at Hoop. Is it too late to give you all an online tutorial?

The Bauble making class!

David Pye bowl, more fungus, cake and thread ...

Sarah winding threads for kits

Field mushrooms and Parasols

Field mushrooms in David Pye bowl

Harvest

Autumn sunshine took Sarah and I outside to wind thread for the kits, drink tea and eat some delicious shop bought custard tarts, the best possible indulgence. As fast as she makes the thread bundles for the kits, they seem to disappear. The Christmas orders are coming in and we are going full pelt. Also a photo of some field mushrooms picked that morning locally, with one or two parasol mushroom thrown in too. They are rather artistically placed in a wonderful hand carved wooden bowl made by David Pye

which he gave to my parents back in RCA days. He was Prof of Furniture Design from 1964-1974 and I remember his collection of moths and butterflies in beautiful museum drawers when we went to visit him at his home in Wadhurst. Loved drawers ever since. The bowl reflects the radiating gills of the mushroom so beautifully ... here is another bowl very similar to it. I treasure this bowl, much loved, much used. The dressing when using it for a hearty salad runs obligingly down the ridges, easy to scoop again for another dousing ...

Special Offer

Please note also that I have a special offer this month. Any Stitch Kit ordered before 30th October will have a FREE Interactive card pack and two postcards included. For every two kits ordered, two FREE packs and two postcards will be sent to you. http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/

Lovebirds Stitch Kits in assembly line!

NEW POSTERS!

New Poster designs on the website ... yes, these illustrations I did in 2006! but they came back from the printers today and I love them, so they are up on the website now, A3 and the first ones are signed. Hope you like them!

Madonna

Madonna and Child

Detail

Detail of Infant Jesus

This is another of those treasured possessions made by my mother in her student days, so, late 30s/40s and now very fragile, it fades every year even though I keep it out of the light. The thread has just disappeared in places, but her hand is very familiar, in the couching and split stitch used on the hands, very much in the medieval tradition, little scraps she had around, some of which I still have the remains of somewhere. I know this may have been more appropriate to post at Christmas but I am just giving you something lovely for now as I am off to school tomorrow, see here http://www.schoolforcreativestartups.com/

and not sure when I will get time over the next three days which is the first, rather scarily named "BOOT CAMP" which makes me visualise mud and being out of breath and feeling rather awkward in over sized and unflattering khaki ... and which I am hoping is in reality sitting in a lecture theatre and meeting some other entrepreneurs, and learning lots of new stuff about business. But stupidly worried about what to wear and whether my bag is big enough for the "quiet snacks" which are required for the day! Just hope I find a chum quickly ... oh!

New Stitch Cards!

Well, here they are, the new stitch cards ... though still excitedly awaiting card samples from the printers. Also working on the packaging. But basically they will be in single design kits with thread and possibly ( a new venture for me) a needle, envelope, and full instructions for stitches. They can be stitched, cut out, coloured some more, hung up sent as gifts, or bought as stocking presents. To start with I am producing 4 bird cards and four christmas decoration cards (photos soon)
They are not on the website yet but will be as soon as I have a finished product, hopefully in the next week or so. What do you think?

Advent Calendar

I am rushing to finish the prototype for the Advent Calendar course which starts on Friday! It is more stitching than you can shake a stick at but it will be lovely. And I have so many other things that need to be done ... I need ten sets of fingers all busy like an articulated automated machine ... but if you live near Tenterden in Kent then get yourself booked in to the course at Hoop or ring Vanessa on 01580 388011 to book your place. Or come along to the next course which is Christmas Decorations which I have designed 6 decs for you to make and embroider. If you can't get along to these then how about an online course? I have been thinking about doing some short projects online with tutorials once a week. Any views on this? 

I will of course post the finished article when I finally get to the end ... sun shining and at least can sit outside to sew ...

Sweet Nostalgia ...

I have been sorting out books on the stairs bookcase and found this old copy of The Faber Book of Comic Verse though I am not sure of the publication date it is at least 1940's. It was a gift from my mother to my father just after the war, on his birthday 27th April 1947. There can't have been even an idea of my brother yet and still they were dreaming of their new life together and all it's possibilities ... My mother, the nurturing earth mother contentedly coping with 16 children all looking like my father with only one daughter! My father lounging around taking it easy smoking his pipe. All photos of him then had a pipe in mouth or hand. Some of the in jokes are forever lost, never to be explained sadly, like the sandwich tree, and the even more mysterious mitre plant ... and "PIP when 306" ?

It is a great treasure this little drawing and good to share with the outside world. Drawing in books? ABSOLUTELY!

Here they are on a picnic before I was born with my brother John and sister Naomi ....

and John and Naomi with my mother.

Stitch Cards

Now ... in advance of our latest range of products I am going to share with you some of my mother's teaching aids. She made these stitch cards to show different embroidery stitches, and how to embellish them further by weaving and stitching into them, and as stitching on counted punched holes makes for certain accuracy, it meant her pupils could not fail. She used thick cotton embroidery threads, in wonderful sixties hot colours. The pricks in the cards were made by a fabulous spiked wheeled tool which could inflict a nasty bite if it slipped. It was one of my jobs when a child to run the wheel along a pencil line on the cards, then she would come along with a special tool she made by ramming a wide eyed needle, eye first into a large rubber, and pushed it through the tiny hole made by the wheel , opening up ready to be stitched.

I had a lovely class in Hythe last week where I had some happy guinea pigs to try the cards! It is very satisfying stitching through cards ... a good noise and perfect stitching every time.

My own stitch cards will be available in a week or to and those of you who receive the Newsletter will be hearing of it via that also. But will post some more as soon as I can!

Crochet project finished

I am not sure why pictures of finished crochet is so satisfying ... I have been working on this blanket for about 3 months, pretty much at every opportunity and now the main section is complete and I am racing around the border in a kind of frantic way ... I am eager, as always to get on with the next one. I am so glad I can be an unashamed crochet lover now after years of secret crocheting I can carry my balls of wool and hooks around with pride. When I was at college and trying to be so deadly serious about my art I used to crochet on the train and hide it in my bag once I got to London ... it just would not even have been funny to be caught out as a crafter then, but now! Well, I find it is quite the opposite now and the serious young thins are waving their hooks about like there is now tomorrow, crocheting their bearded boyfriends waistcoats and the like ...

 Then the next project is another blanket ( pictured below ) but one I have put aside for a while. The original idea was to use all my mothers fine Shetland yarn plus others I had found and added to to make a very large heirloom blanket on her honour. She used these yarns to knit the most wonderful little dollies, tiny little things, also tiny little bird finger puppets. She was doing this still with amazing eyesight for a lady in her eighties. I have the birds hidden away somewhere and will photograph them and the little dollies too so consider this post unfinished!

... I think my camera lens has some jam or greasy fingerprint of some kind smeared on it as every photo I have taken recently has a smudge in the same place. But after a bit of spit and polish here they are ...