Blog Birthday – 10 years old Today!

10 years ago today I made a momentous decision and began writing this blog!

At the time I doubt if I expected I’d still be writing it 10 years later and for it to have completely changed my life. It led to so many new opportunities and more importantly to so many new and lifelong friendships. And when so many other folks have stopped writing their blogs I am so pleased that I kept going with mine (I don’t think I ever left a gap in posting of more than a month in the whole 10 years!)

I was in a very different place then. I had just returned to quilting and crochet as a hobby but wouldn’t have dreamed that I could turn them into an actual career, and yet that’s what happened.

I wish I could share my original blog header with you. It was of my hexy quilt, a chicken pincushion and some scattered buttons, all set up on my landing with the help of my boys.  One of the lovely memories I have of starting this blog was that both my sons (then 16 and 18) helped me to do it and we had such a laugh together!

Instead I have found this early blog button that my DH would have created for me.

I thought it would be fun to share my first ever post here, it certainly puts my journey into context and I find it so interesting to read with hindsight…

I’ve been so excited and inspired by all the ‘crafty’ blogs and websites I’ve found on the internet over the last week that I have decided to start my own!

It has been a bit traumatic marshaling help from the men of the house to get this going, as IT stuff really isn’t my bag. So thanks Jonathan for taking the main photo and helping me with Flickr, thanks Felix for customising the blog so well and getting me started, and thanks Jacob for suggesting the ‘tag-line’!

The main reason for the blog is to share and communicate my love of all things ‘crafty’ whether involving fabric, wool, paint or buttons! I will be sharing ideas and photos of completed projects, tips, inspirations and just general blethering on about one of my favourite subjects with other like minded people.

I’m hoping to put up lots of photos of quilts and other projects on Flickr for everybody to share and hopefully feel inspired to have a go at themselves. I will also be cataloguing and discussing some older projects like needlepoint. I plan to show photos of favourite or outstanding haberdashery for everyone to drool over, as well as info on great suppliers and websites and any other fabby things that I’ve found. I’d also love to share patterns and ‘how to’s’ for recent projects. Expect a lot of chat about crocheting too as that is a current passion!

I will also include lots of links to all these other crafty websites that have so enthused me. My starting point in to this whole wonderful world was ‘Miss Crafty’s’ website (now sadly gone) which I came across while researching the artist Lucy Campbell for our ongoing Jonathan Avery Gallery project (see I was actually working at the time!). When I realised that Miss Crafty was relatively local to our Glasgow store I got really excited and sent her an email. She sent me a lovely warm reply and I realised that I wanted to join this community, that in fact I have been waiting for this for years, feeling isolated and slightly freakish, being called ‘granny’ and wondering why I was always hanging out with old ladies! As I said to Miss Crafty, I started attending quilting groups in my 20’s where I was usually the youngest by about 30 years, I then tried again in my 40’s and I was still the youngest by about 30 years! Where were all the people my age who loved sewing and making things? I couldn’t be the only one, surely? I worried that all the skills we had been taught at school or learned from our mothers, sisters, aunts and grannys would be lost forever. Things improved somewhat when I started employing girls who had an interest in haberdashery (a major advantage for getting a Jonathan Avery job!) but we still felt like a little island surrounded by woman saying ‘I can’t even sew on a button’.
So you can understand why I became so excited when I found all these websites. Not only where the ladies obviously young (they could work the internet for one thing!) they were showing beautiful, cool, tasteful, inspiring projects! And so many of them, you could waste days looking through them (and I plan to)!
Well I think this is quite enough for a first blog attempt. Now I’ve just got to find some people to read it!

I didn’t even have an image for this post as that was beyond my capabilities! I did however share two images of a cot quilt I made for my friend Sarah in my next post (after watching a video tutorial apparently!).

To celebrate this momentous anniversary I will be hosting a MASSIVE GIVEAWAY tomorrow! I thought it would be a lovely way to say thank you to all my blog readers, as without you I don’t think I would still be writing this (but then maybe I would as I never expected anyone to read it in the first place!).

I have so much amazing swag to giveaway! Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to enter!