
On the upside, there was a nice surprise at the back of the Needlework and Crafts book – an envelope containing 10 gift transfers. These are iron-on transfers of a range of designs that were very popular in the 1920s. The designs are pretty, as you can see from the illustration above and the following example, which is the larger of the two transfers for the Lilac design seen on the cushion cover above.
To request a copy of the free Gift Pack please register with us by completing the Registration Form and click on ‘Craft’ in the list of topics of interest. The Gift Pack PDF will be sent to you by email.
All those who register with us to receive the free Gift Pack will also be entered into a Free Prize Draw to win our office copy of Needlework and Crafts with the 10 iron-on transfers in the back. One lucky winner will be selected on 29th March 2015 (when British Summer Time begins and we can look forward to longer and warmer days). Register soon to be included in this free prize draw.
In the midst of winter gloom and post-Christmas, my thoughts turn to spring and to the next holiday, which is Easter. My family often come to me for lunch on Easter Sunday and there are gifts and an Easter Egg Hunt for the children. This year I am planning to revive a childhood craft skill, inspired by Project 77 and Lillie London Lesson on creating wool toys for children in our edition of Lillie London’s Needlework Book. When I was at primary school there was a craze for making wool pompoms by winding odd bits of multi-coloured wool around cardboard circles. It was a fad that was probably inspired by the children’s TV programme Blue Peter (I think Lesley Judd made Flumps using pompoms - which will mean nothing to our American readers) and we spent hours winding wool and experimenting with different effects by tying in a variety of colours at intervals during the wind.
I was therefore both amused and pleased to find that Lillie London had included a project in her book to create chicks and bunnies for children using these wool pompoms. It hadn’t occurred to me as a child to trim the pompoms into different shapes and use different sizes of pompom together to create animals. It will be fun to create Easter gifts using this technique and I have included the project and lesson from the book in the free Vintage Needlework Gift Pack so you can have a go too.
For a nostalgic indulgence, here is a link to some clips of children’s TV from the 1970s and 1980s, including Blue Peter. Sadly I couldn’t find a video of Lesley Judd making pompom Flumps but there are several episodes of Blue Peter from the 1970s on YouTube. http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/childrens/bbc_a-l.html