Tudor Rose Patchwork's Blog!

Hi everyone!

I am Izzy and I have been working for Tudor Rose Patchwork for about 7 months.  It has been a major learning curve for me, as I knew quite a lot about sewing but not very much about patchwork when I started here.

I have just learned about chevron foundation pieces as I am making up samples from the new fabric ranges that come into the shop on a regular basis.  These are great fun and really easy. The new Happy Birds range of fabrics are lovely for this style as the fabric is a smaller ditsy type of print.  I have also learned the benefit of using the iron all the time while working on patchwork – it makes a real difference.

On the 1^st of July, Ruth our rep from Janome, came in and I was lucky enough to get some one-on-one experience on each machine.  I found it fascinating to learn about the machines and particularly the embroidery techniques you can use with them.  Hopefully I will now be able to pass this information on to our customers.   The little Jem Platinum – the JP760 – was brilliant as it was light weight and extremely versatile.  The embroidery, particularly the feather stitch, just worked a treat with a strong-coloured thread on a different coloured fabric.  It got me thinking about what I can do at home.

In fact, all of this has made  me really eager to put my learning to use, and to make my own quilt and throw at home using the wide range of fabrics in the shop, especially the pinky coloured ones.  I can always see another one that I just must have.  My husband says I must feel I’m working in a chocolate box but without the weight gain!

- Izzy

The workshop was really humming on Thursday, February 17.   We made the workshop available for customers and friends to come in and make bags for the kids who are unfortunate enough to be admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.   The bags are simple affairs, but the kids love them and they’re useful for carrying medicine and the other medical paraphenalia that they they have to have with them all the time.  Along, of course, with sweets and drinks and all those essential things that kids just can’t do without.  Thanks to Helen Coverley for organising it, and a special thanks to the lady who brought in so many bags that she’d prepared earlier.   In the end 125 bags were made and sent to the hospital. That’s high productivity in a good cause if ever we saw it.

These piccies were taken by Sylvia Davies, whose granddaughter Emma was recently a patient at Great Ormond Street, and who kicked the whole thing off.

Well done to everyone involved.   Is this a sign that David Cameron’s “Big Society” is kicking off in Oakley?  

Hi there – this is the first in what we hope will be a never-ending stream of blogs for Tudor Rose Patchwork.   Sandra and I will be contributing from time to time, but our staff – Jane, Joan, Pam, Kim, Izzy – and even Hayley, our Girl Sunday – will be contributing to the mayhem.

Since this is the first entry, I suppose I’d better try to make it interesting.   So … our website!   You’ve probably noticed this, since you wouldn’t be reading this blog if you hadn’t found the website, but I guess it’s possible that you came to it from some other route.

The Tudor Rose Patchwork website address is http://www.tudorrosepatchwork.co.uk and it’s expanding at a great rate – well, it’s expanding at the rate I can manage, but it IS growing quite quickly.   So it’s worth coming back reasonably often to see what I’ve managed to put up on the site.   We have about 1,500 items on the site at the moment, but we have nearer 6,500 items in the store.   We’ll never put them all up, but the ones we think will be of interest to on-line shoppers go up as fast as our little fingers can manage.

We (read “I”) also do a lot of the photography.   Not the fabric or the kits, for which the manufacturers usually supply good quality pictures.  But certainly all of the bits and pieces, including most of the workshop sample pictures.   I try to keep the standard high.   Unfortunately, cameras and computer screens don’t always see things as our eyes do, and so the colours you see on the site are “best efforts” in terms of colour accuracy.  They’re usually not too far away, though.  We’ve not had any complaints about that so far.

Apart from the items you can see on this website we sell yarn, knitting patterns and pins, crochet hooks and other knitting bits and pieces.   But those are sold on-line at our OTHER website, Wonderwool.   You can visit Wonderwool at http://www.wonderwool.co.uk.

Most of our prices are very competitive.   Sandra spends a lot of time making sure of that.  While we can’t always compete on price, we CAN compete on service.   We give ourselves 48 hours to turn an order around, but we usually get them away a lot quicker than that.   The other week a lady ordered yarn from the Wonderwool website on the Friday and received it on the Saturday morning.  Okay, it’s not always that good – the vagaries of our good friend, Royal Mail, see to that – but it’s rare for it to take more than two days to reach you.