Birthday celebrations

August was a special month as my sister celebrated her 50th birthday.

It was fun finding a gift for her, spending a long time picking and choosing from lots of fabulous handmade things on Folksy.

The personally made necklace was a hit, I'm pleased to say, but it needed something a little extra to accompany it ... a 50th brooch with sparkly stars ... you're only 50 once right?  I loved making this mini brooch for her, a little different to the bunting birthday brooches that are in my shops, but I was very pleased with how cute it looks.  Perhaps it'll be kept in a keepsake/memory box as a reminder of her wonderful birthday.

This little leaping hare (or rabbit) keyring seemed to cause a bit of a stir on my Facebook page which resulted in a special customer order to sew a little fabric pocket pouch on the reverse to neatly hold a trolley/pound coin needed at supermarkets.  What an inspirational idea.  You may be seeing more of this style of keyring in my shop in the future.

Getting set for Christmas ...

My little fingers have been sewing, sewing, sewing ready for the busiest and most fun time of year.  Buyers seem to have started their shopping earlier this year compared to last, so it's been nice to see items travelling off to new homes ready for the Christmas season.

Remember my dolly peg Santas?  Well this year there's three for sale on-line and another three are being displayed on the Christmas tree at The Wisbech Craft Centre.  The centre has the most wonderful selection of gorgeous, unique, handmade items.  It'll be a popular gift purchasing choice for the locals I'm sure and with it's new selling page on Facebook, those further afield can now also get in touch with the designers to purchase direct, rather than make a special trip to the shop.



I've also been compiling, with the help of Katie and Paul, my first Ellie's Treasures catalogue.  It was a request from a dear customer who said she wasn't able to regularly get on to the internet.  I set too making ten new items just for this new venture and it's now on its way to her and her friends. All exciting stuff!



Another new idea for Christmas this year are these mini brooches.  They came about through a custom order for a midwife themed bag charm.  As the lady requested a double sided bag charm, something I hadn't thought of before, I made her a special little thank you brooch that was mini in size and just the cutest!  Putting together sets of four mini brooches (all about 2 - 2.5cm square) for customers to pick and choose have been popular so far - they make brilliant stocking fillers.  My first set of four sold in double quick time - here's the second set that are currently available and another four will be listed in the next couple of days.



Just to let you know - last Ellie's Treasures purchasing dates in order to receive goods by Christmas are:

Thursday 18th December - UK

Wednesday 10th December - USA
Thursday 11th December - Western Europe

Gorgeous trims, fabby banner and car probs!

Sold this fabric wallet and received a message asking if there was any chance I could either make a wallet in different fabrics or update the heart ribbon on this one with something more funky/retro/stripy or checked.  Unfortunately time wasn't on my side to start a fresh new wallet ready for Christmas mailing (plus the fact I'd run out of zips and my supplier's stock had been completely ruined by flood damage).  Rummaging through my ever growing box of ribbons I couldn't really find anything suitable to use.

This gave me a good excuse to trundle over to my local store and have a nosey at what they had on offer.  First viewing was rather disappointing, I found, and bought, a metre of purple and white checked, but thought it would look a bit bland.  Then by chance I discovered a little box of bundled up trims and ribbons at amazing prices and spent a good 20 minutes deciding which trims would be good for my collection and to use on the wallet.  I was able to find four, and gave my customer a choice.  She picked the very one that I too would have chosen, so I set too unpicking and restitching in double quick time to get a new and very updated looking wallet to send off before last posting date.


Have you seen the new banner on my blog?  My daughter, Katie, put it together for me as she was spurting forth about how awful my previous, new, banner was (I actually thought it was quite pretty).  She's studying media at college and has a particular dislike to fonts that are readily available on the PC and also to Comic Sans (I know, I know, it's a known thing how terrible that font is supposed to be - for me, I actually like it and I've heard it's a good one to use for people who are dyslexic).  Anyway, she liked my Facebook cover and thought she'd adapt that for my blog and two shops.  Have to say, it's simple but effective.  Should add that the Facebook one was put together by me, so ignore the PC available font used on that one!!  She wants to design my next batch of business cards too, as again I've used a "terrible" font.

This week seems, once again, to be a "chasing my tail" week.  College finished on Thursday lunch time so I picked Katie up from her usual coach stop and she headed to the yard to have a nice, but rather excitable, hack on Jay together with the yard owner and one of her ponies.  At least I now have 3 weeks of not so early mornings, much needed I can tell you.

Paul, still working last week, set off to some far flung area of the country to hear weird noises as he reached Peterborough and decided it wasn't worth the risk of continuing.  Having called out the breakdown guys and had the car towed to our well trusted repair garage in Peterborough, it turns out this was the wisest thing he could have done.  Some belt or other was completely worn to threadbare and could have done some pretty permanent damage if it had snapped en-route.  Car restored to working order and then we booked it in again for another "simple" job that needed sorting under the bonnet.  Obviously not so simple as it's still at the garage and won't be looked at again until 5th January!  Sigh.  Luckily the in-laws have lent us their lovely "yellow peril" run around to use as our second car, although, shock horror, this refused to start yesterday evening after sorting Jay out at the yard.  With a boot full of food, chilled and frozen, and Ben at home alone, I wasn't too impressed, especially as again we had to call out the breakdown guys with suggestions that it would be best to tow the car back to Peterborough rather than home!  The lovely yard owner and her family invited us in for a home tour and warm cuppa as we waited for the breakdown van.  Luckily, the chap was able to get the car working - something electrical (I'm a women, what he actually did didn't really sink in).   Home and dry by 8 o'clock - a big glass of wine and take-out was much needed I can tell you.  So this year, we've used the wonderful GEM breakdown 3 times, for 3 different cars.  Money well spent I'd say!

Here it is ...

... the wallet that I made after a customer request.  I managed to get it ready in two weeks so that was a big bonus!  My prized needle is now bent - so much hand sewing through several layers - however I was very happy with how the wallet turned out and was thrilled to receive very complimentary feedback.

The fabric used for the wallet was given to me by my mother-in-law.  Having lived for a while in Singapore, she purchased and brought back to England these, and other fabrics, in 1972.  The stunning pink material is Batik and beautifully vibrant.


Zipped section for coins with pretty decorated zip pull.  Velcro fastened strap.


Internal slots for five credit cards.


Large section for paper money.

"I have just received my wallet and I love it, it has out weighed my expectations and I am really thrilled with it . So well made and your stitching is sooo neat! Love the fabric, just love everything about it and thank you so much for making this for me." S. McD.

Money/voucher wallet

I received a customer request to make a 16.5 x 9 cm stiffened fabric wallet to hold notes of the cash kind and/or shopping vouchers.

Using two lovely fabrics (as a cover and a liner), both interfaced and having a layer of acetate between them to keep the wallet sturdy, as requested.  My customer uses a red handbag, so I chose fabrics that would go well with this and added a strip of red felt across the front, pastel green running stitch along it in embroidery silk and finished with a large floral button.  The outer material is taken from a vintage 70s party dress that once belonged to my sister-in-law!


What do you think?  I'm quite impressed and am going to make one for myself for my store vouchers.  They're currently kept in one place inside a shabby plastic wallet that's bent and torn!  This'll look far smarter.

Customer orders

I've been pretty busy lately working on a customer order of Christmas themed hand appliques needed to adorn knitted cushions that my customer is making for presents.

I made nine appliques in the end ready for her to choose which she'd prefer.  I was really pleased with them all, and found the whole process a little different and great fun, even though it is quite time consuming!

Here's the nine that I finished.  My favourites are the Santa, Christmas pudding, stocking and angel.  Funnily enough the very two, bell and bauble, which I thought would be the easiest to compile were actually the hardest and ended up my least favourite!


I also made a special owl and pussycat brooch for the same customer - she requested it to go on a hat she was knitting as a birthday gift.



I'm more than happy to do special orders for people.  If you see something listed at Ellie's Treasures that's not quite what you're after - perhaps you'd prefer a specific colour, size or shape, or you have an idea but need someone to turn it into reality, then please do get in touch.  I would never have gone ahead and tried hand applique if it hadn't of been for Juls, my customer, and probably would never have through of "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" for a brooch either!

Cool brooches customer order

This is Juls sporting one of my Fairy Toadstool brooches!  She is a lovely, friendly customer who found me through Folksy.  Juls told me she was knitting berets as Christmas presents and thought my brooches would make a lovely finishing touch, so she asked me to make four more for her, to her specifications.  Here they are:

I particularly love the dolphin.  It is truly one-of-a-kind as the charm came off a broken bracelet belonging to Katie, so it is an only one!  I have sourced some pretty tibetan silver dophin charms though, so will be making brooches and keyrings using these very soon.

I'm very happy to receive customer orders - just get in touch to discuss what you're after.  I'll keep you informed step by step, sending you photos as I go or once items are finished.

Custom orders

Thought I'd share these two orders, requested by customers in the last week or so.

I love both of them, but am particularly pleased with the little teapot brooch.  The brief was for it to be in greens and reds and the idea of using flowers, which I cut out from a 70s party dress (remember wearing them as a child?), came to me when sifting through fabrics for something else.  Adding pale green seed beads to the flower centres plus red seed beads and sequin to the lid of the teapot seemed to finish it all beautifully.  I think I may be adding a few more teapot brooches to Ellie's Treasures - I'll keep you posted.


My second custom was this cute hanging decoration.  Initially my customer asked for something similar to my owl in a tree brooch, but as a hanging and therefore a bit larger.  One little owl charm on its own looked quite lost, so, after consultation, we decided on two owls and two butterflies.  Once surrounded by the Autumn colours of the swirly silk thread and tiny seed beads it looked wonderful.

New brooches

My 2012 plan to list new items at Ellie's Treasures far more frequently took a nose dive within the first few days of January!  As is usual in this household, life came first and sewing came second.  By the evening, my usual sewing time, I was completely exhausted to lift a needle, let alone plan something new, cut it out, and sew it all together with care.  I have, however, managed to make and list a new owl brooch which I think is rather lovely:



and am now in the process of making a new Patchy Pockets wallet. 

Having said all that, I didn't put my sewing kit away entirely.  We had a bit of fun (easy to say now) with Jay a couple of weeks ago in that we decided to load him in the trailer and bring him home for a nice hack up to the marsh.   We have done this before, no problems, and on this occasion he loaded well to come out to our home, but refused to load to go back to his own home after his hack.  After 2 1/2 hours of very stressful "encouraging", we had to keep Jay in our garden over night!  Typically, it was the night the wind decided to blow, pretty strong actually, which couldn't have been pleasant for the poor chap.  He survived and seemed to be quite happy roaming the nooks and crannies of our garden, sticking his nose over the fence and the gate to get a good view of the surrounding area (you should see the state of the lawn!).  We were at a loss as to what to do to get him into the trailer.  We'd called his previous owners for help and they offered to come over to assist us, weather permitting.  The wind in the morning was even worse, with hail storms too at times.  Luckily, around midday, it died down completely, and they came over complete with feed bowls, haylage and lunge lines!  It took us (well them mainly) an hour (which was their available time slot) to load him and get back safely to the yard.  I couldn't have done it without them and was extrememly grateful for their persistance, calmness and for just being there.  It was also pretty amazing that the weather stayed relatively calm for that hour, picking up again once we were back at the yard.  Someone must have been watching over us! 



We've started trailer training him now, as we'd like to move to a new livery yard very soon.  So far we've had no luck.  It is very tiring and frustrating when a horse that once loaded decides enough is enough.

As a thank you I sent the ladies some special chocolate biccies to have with their tea and coffee and I made these little brooches for the yard owner's two children as they were brilliant, sitting and waiting for an hour in the car.


Quite like the little horses with the jumps - may make something similar to Ellie's Treasures.

Harvesting the lavender

The utility room smells fabulous now that I've had a chance to cut all the lavender from the front garden ready for storing and using in my heart lavender bags.  It's amazing how much lavender is needed to fill each bag and I'm not too sure how far this year's crop will go but I have my eye on a neighbour's very large lavender bush - just plucking up the courage to ask if I may give it a bit of a cut!


Following on from my previous post, life still seems to be manic (you'll see why in a bit - I'll post about what's been going on very soon, promise) - but I do believe I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel - for now!  Due to this manicness (if that's a word), Ellie's Treasures hasn't been restocked in while, but I do have plenty of lovely things just needing to be finished off ready to list.  I've very aware that the "season of goodwill" will soon be upon us and judging by my shop analytics, folk are already looking for my dolly-peg Santas.  I have six in the pipeline, just waiting for their Santa sacks, but I probably won't be listing anything Christmassy until October - oops, that's next week :0) - where does the time go?

I'm also working on a few custom orders (I love doing these) so have naturally been concentrating on these more than anything else.  Here's a custom lavender heart that was sent out this last week.  The lady asked for the two dogs to resemble her sister-in-law's little terriers.  She sent me some photos to distinguish their colourings - luckily it was fairly simple as they're mainly white with one little patch of colour on their tails.  Also, the brief was to use Leeds United colours - she's a big supporter apparently!  Rather cute I thought.