Jane Russell

This has got to be one of the best pictures ever taken of her. She looks so young here, and so natural. I love it.

Pets on Parade

If you love vintage photographs you will love this book. "The Best Dog in the World" by Donna Long, is a quirky collection of images of children and their dogs dating back to the turn of the last century. I discovered it while browsing the bookshop in Selfridges recently, and found it truly captivating. I like dogs and wouldn't call myself a "doggy" person, but the book is so charming I couldn't put it down. Have a look... they have it on Amazon.

Simple back stitch

Embroidery project No1

So when I'm not working on the business or dashing about on set, the most relaxing thing I can find to do is embroidery. I kind of avoided it like the plague for years as the mere word 'embroidery' fills me with fear and dread, remembering the regulation apron we were all forced to make and embroider at school. Mine was pretty hideous I must say, and being forced to wear it 3 times a week in home economics classes didn't help much either. Don't get me wrong, even at the tender age of 11 years old, I loved sewing, but I wanted to do my own thing and that apron was just another reason to hate school and it's confining ways.

A couple of years ago I stumbled across a couple of books by an author called Jenny Hart. Jenny has released a few books now, containing fantastic idea's and templates for embroidery projects. Reading them really opened my mind to a whole new world of stitch craft.

So now, I don't follow the book any more and just do my own thing with whatever inspires me. It's really great because starting a business, I find myself pretty broke a lot of the time so I have started making gifts for all my girlfriends and female relatives. I get a great sense of satisfaction from putting a lot of time and effort into something and then letting it go, knowing that it will be really appreciated and maybe still around in many years to come.

I quite like to mix a bit of felt applique in with the projects to add a bit more dimension, but be warned, these items must be dry cleaned as felt shrinks!! I actually recommend that all of the embroideries should be dry cleaned just to be on the safe side as I have found that some threads are not really colourfast.

Here are a couple of pictures of one of my own projects. I bought a beautiful white cotton pillowslip from The White Company, and then began my search on the internet for Mexican 'Day Of The Dead' images. I sketched the whole idea freehand onto a piece of paper, but if you aren't so good at drawing and have a good computer/printer then just blow the images up and print them off. I Traced over the image with a black pen and when it was dry, slipped it inside the pillowslip. You can see the black ink through the white cotton in good light, so I just lightly traced the outline with a pencil onto the fabric (this can usually be erased if you need to), and then began to stitch.

I basically used a very simple back stitch on the entire pillow (see diagram). So you see, it doesn't have to be complicated. This pillow took me in total, about 12 hours to do. I loved every minute. So now you know! Off you go then, & Good luck!!!