A tad dramatic I know but in all honesty, this is my nemesis -

I purchased this at the Hobbycraft & Creative Stitches Show at the SECC back in (blushes) October 2011. I figured I would have it done for Christmas, and didn’t really take in the scale of the demo cushion on display, instead falling in love with that heart shaped O with the Union Jack pattern.

I started it when I got home that night, then Christmas hit and my order book went nuts, so it was popped into my pink polkadot bag beside my sofa ready to stitch when I had a spare few minutes. It came out again when we went to Center Parcs in January and I did a little right before I fell ill.

Since then, it’s sat in the polkadot bag, beside the sofa, waiting to be stitched.

At the weekend, I re-discoverd it and decided that I MUST have this in San Francisco with me – completed. I’m not going to be able to do it on the plane as I can’t take the needle or scissors required on with me, instead I have to have it finished and ready to go.

To motivate me, I’ve decided to take a picture of it on the 1st of each month, and pop it up here. That way, I can see progress which will (hopefully) motivate me to do a little more.

So here it is – the result of about 10 hours of stitching so far, close up.

I kid you not, 10 hours. This is going to take me ages…..

Way back at the start of April, my lovely, trusty, 18 month old sewing machine decided to give up on me. On the weekend I ran a promotion for my Name Banners, meaning I had 38 to make.

It just wouldn’t work – the hand wheel was very stiff to turn, the needle kept sticking and an error message kept coming up on screen that indicated that the bobbin was tangled, when there was no problem with it at all. I spent 4 hours trying to figure out how to fix it – I cleaned out the bobbin case, I was only able to remove part of the needle plate to clean underneath, I switched it off and back on again (after all, it’s computerised and isn’t that how you fix computers?) and nothing. All the Name Banners were cut out and piled up neatly on my dining table and I had nothing to sew them with.

I was about to send my husband to Argos to pick up a spare machine for £150 when my lovely Facebook friend Lyndsey suggested the little Hobbycraft Machine, which was for sale at £24.99. Desperate, Hubby was sent there instead and came back with this:

So yeah, it’s tiny. Teeny weeny. And reding the 1 review on the Hobbycraft website, it really wasn’t going to cut it. But I gave it a go and instantly hit a problem – you made it stitch by switching it on and off. There is a pedal, but like the machine itself its weeny and it didn’t really matter what pressure you put on it, the machine had 2 speeds, slow and slightly less slow. So to stitch, you hit on and to stop, you hit off. Which is great for Jack (but more on that later), but for me, urgh! It really did take some getting used to, for those of you who machine sew out there you will know that you get to know your machine, you know exactly what pressure to apply to the pedal for the speed you require without even thinking about it. Getting used to a new machine takes time, and I just didn’t have time with this, I wanted my old machine back!

I eventually managed to get the Name Banners done, and fortunately my machine broke at a time where I was planning to have some time off from work anyway, as Ed was in San Francisco for a week. So I popped my old machine on my desk and tried to put it out of my mind for a few days.

Having the little machine in our house was wonderful though, because (I am sad to say) the boys don’t get to touch my sewing machine. For 1 thing, reaching the pedal is a problem for them all. And it goes really fast – too fast for little hands. But the little machine meant that all 3 of them were able to use it, and make something entirely on their own. And that’s for tomorrow’s Blog post.

I did eventually brave going into a small, independent sewing machine repair shop a few miles from where I live who told me the machine could be fixed by just putting oil inside the holes located over your sewing machine and that would fix the problem – DON’T DO THIS! I didn’t, it just didn’t seem right, and having read a bit online it just wouldn’t have worked. No, what I did was manage to take off the whole of the needle plate with a little more patience and I was amazed at the amount of fluff under it. I gave the bobbin mechanism a little oil and things appear to be back to working order again, hoorah!

However, if your thinking of taking up sewing and don’t want to fork out £100+ on a machine, it really wouldn’t hurt you to give the little hobbycraft one a try. It is frustrating when your used to a full sized machine, but it really does do basic stitching perfectly.

Apologies for being so quiet over the past few weeks, but a LOT has been happening in my real life that has really cut down on my sewing, blogging and Facebook time.

Because of these changes, I’ve decided to cut down my range even more. In a nutshell, I will have to wind down the selling side of red & rosy over the next few months – the Blog will still be here and I am still planning on providing tutorials and blogging about “stuff” (my exciting new adventure hopefully!). On the positive side I won’t have any of those annoying adverts you get on blogs either as there is absolutely no making money whatsoever for me.

The reason for this?  My wonderful* husband has been offered (and accepted) a job in San Francisco!  Honestly, I can’t even begin to explain to you how excited we are at this potential adventure. I say potential as nothing is certain until we have cleared US Immigration and set foot outside the Airport.  Scary, but a gigantic adventure for the five of us.

But back to the changes!  For the time being, I am concentrating on ready made products like the Kindle, ipad2 & phone cozy’s.  This way I am not keeping people hanging and waiting for orders and nothing will be popped up for sale until it’s completed and ready to post.  I’m not saying I’m never going back to making personalised items, as there is no guarantee that our Visa application will be successful, but for the time being as we are trying to get ourselves organised this is the most sensible way to proceed.

In the meantime, if your looking for a name banner you won’t go wrong with The Banner Boutique, Woolly Comforts or Heartfelt Handmade - all very lovely ladies who put their heart into their makes and never fail to surprise me with their beautiful work.

So that’s my news! I have a few tutorials that I’ll be publishing over the next few weeks.  All the photographs are ready I just need to sit down and write out the steps, this time they are for bunting, a Peter Pan hat, a felt birthday badge and a Wreath dedicated to sewing!

In the meantime, if your looking for a simple tutorial you won’t go wrong with my Heart Hair Clip Tutorial.

Thanks for reading!

* the wonderful was added by my amazing husband when I asked him to sanity check this post for me, he thinks I didn’t notice!

As red & rosy grows and evolves I’m having to make a few tough decisions on what lines to continue and what lines to give up.  Unfortunately, some of my more popular lines have to go because there is a limit to how many personalised items I am able to do with very limited childcare for 3 children (in essence I get 2 x 1.5 hour slots where I have no children at all, and every 3rd week one of those are used up helping with a nursery trip).

So, one of the first things I am having to retire is the hairclip holder.  BUT!  Don’t worry, as I have met many, many lovely ladies while networking on Facebook and the lovely Wendy over at Felt sew nice will be able to help you out with all your hairclip holder needs (and bags, brooches and much much more!).

Pop over and say hi, and tell her I sent you x

I’m retiring another line tomorrow BUT I have one of the most perfect pages to show you to make up for it :-)  Don’t you just love the talented crafters on Facebook!

I have had lots of enquiries about making ipad covers and iPad2 covers and while I love the enquiries, not actually having an iPad does prove to be a bit of an issue when trying to make sure it fits correctly!  I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to save up for one, at the exact time I ran out of almost all my ribbon and certain types of buttons, so any headway I made on saving was instantly wiped out.  Frustrating!

However, my ever helpful husband found a solution.  Don’t be fooled, it wasn’t to actually buy me an iPad.  No — it was to buy (using my Paypal account) a full sized display model.

I’m not sure if I am insulted or happy with this!

But anyway — as soon as it arrives I am going to be able to offer all of my iPhone and Kindle cozies in iPad size too!  Like this one:

Hurrah! Pictures to follow as soon as they ready.

A little sneak peak of of my up and coming Rule, Britannia! range. I’m very excited!

Update, 29 February 2012: I just wanted to update everyone on the progress made with this issue. If you look in the Comments section of this post (you will have to be on the page that is displaying the post only, so click on the title) you will see a comment from Name Garlands for Kids which they also emailed to me and popped on a comment form through the website too. They have fully apologised and removed this image and assured me that they have not taken any payment. I have also popped my reply below so that everything is out in the open. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to write lovely comments here and on Facebook, it saddens me that this does appear to be a very common problem and most people have experienced this. As I say at the bottom of my post – ‘watermark your images’ or as someone else suggested, ‘pop your business card into every photograph.’

Before you start to read this post please be aware that this is based entirely on FACTS.  Images are provided to back this up and you will find out why as you read further.

For those of you who are already fans of my Facebook page (and those who aren’t pop over to red & rosy and become a fan immediately please!) you may have seen a post I put up at about 4.00pm one day regarding a message I had received from a lovely fellow crafter.  In this message she attached a link to a page called Name Garlands for Kids that had a photo album entitled Dinosaurs.  The lead picture into that album was my little boy Toby’s name banner (link here to the original picture uploaded to Facebook by me on 21 January 2011 and my original Blog post here).

In essence, this is the image I found when I clicked into the page’s albums.

Second image down is my Toby name banner.  And when you clicked into the album:

Not only does it have my image (and other crafters) but the entire description underneath is lifted from Kids Decorating Ideas!

I posted on their wall asking them for contact information so I could email them, foolishly with my personal profile.  My post was removed and I was banned from the page instantly.  So, I decided to ask for advice on how to report the image as my own via my status.

After an hour we finally had the attention of the page in question, and their response?  Well I’ll let you read for yourself.

Just to clarify, nowhere on that page did it say that this was an example of their work.  Underneath the image I have a screenshot of someone placing an order for the garland.  I haven’t posted that image as I haven’t been able to blur their name and picture yet, but I will add it to this post as soon as I figure that out!  Money had changed hands. (NOTE – IMAGE NOW BELOW)

It was around now that things moved too quickly for me to get screengrabs, so to cut right to it I was informed by the page that as my photograph did not say copyright ON it, the whole thing was entirely my own fault.  Just to clarify, this was posted on my website and my website has always had it’s little footer with the copyright bit.  Very clearly.

The page then disappeared, presumably they took it down.  Having the foresight for such an occasion (or perhaps being found out was a common problem?) they also had a personal page  all set up and ready full of other people’s work (which I have screen grabs of before they changed their privacy settings).

But never fear, because despite using my image without my permission then blaming it on me for not putting a watermark on it (if you look carefully at the images above, 1 of the pictures in the album with mine has someone else’s watermark on it!) they re-published their page a few days ago.

But now to the serious, sensible part.  Its a very sad fact that if you are a crafter of any sort online, the most sensible thing to do is watermark your images with your brand.  In all honesty, as shown above, it won’t stop people from using them BUT it will alert potential customers to the fact that the image is yours.  Plus, if a company has the brass neck to take your image then they will have the brass neck to shift the blame onto anyone but themselves.

As a final note, PLEASE do not go to this “businesses” facebook page and pop a comment on their wall, don’t give them attention, don’t give them like’s and don’t give them higher than normal insights.  Just pass this blog post on and make sure that your friends don’t make the mistake of buying a poorly copied garland from these people.

And as a footnote, if one person from Name Garlands For Kids had just said “sorry, we messed up” or anything even resembling an admittance that something had been done wrong, then I wouldn’t have even considered this post.