Hi, I'm Julie and I've been dabbling in all sorts of crafts for as long as I can remember. This photo is a good few years old now and I should probably update but you know how it is when you find a photo of yourself that you like!
The women around me as I was growing up were very influential, because everyone did some craft or another.
My Mum, Jenny, taught me to sew, to knit and to cook. Here she is, back in 1992, when she was helping me make my bridesmaid's dresses.
My maternal Nan, Pearl, made everything herself. She loved sewing, embroidery, knitting, crochet (wool blankets and fine filigree type) and cooked everything from scratch. She had such green fingers that even the twigs she used to support her runner beans started sprouting! In her later years she knitted hundreds of toys for charity. I remember her churning them out and always stitching their face on them as soon as possible because she said that once they had a face she would know what the rest of them was supposed to be like.
My paternal Nan, Ellen, loved painting and dressmaking. Every time she came to visit we would have to try on some half finished garment she was making for us, usually with pins sticking out of it! Here she is in the 90's at an exhibition of her paintings, she looks a little fierce in the photo but she really wasn’t!
I have had a go at most crafts over the years with varying degrees of success. I quickly unpick or undo my disasters or bury them at the bottom of my wardrobe. At the moment I'm enjoying paper crafts, knitting, crochet, sewing, embroidery, baking and gardening.
Sustainable crafting is something I am especially interested in; recycling and upcycling. What I love most is making something new from things that were heading for the bin or just sitting in a cupboard unused. I don't throw anything away if I can help it and have boxes of little bits of fabric, scraps of ribbon & lace, buttons, beads, patterned paper & card etc. I have an Etsy shop too where I sell a selection of cards, bags and other handmade items.
Back in the 1990's I had a number of my cross stitch designs published in several UK magazines and for a while sold my own range of cross stitch kits.
When my children were small, most of my crafting was almost exclusively activities that we could do together.
Now they are older I have gradually taken different crafts back up again. I always have loads of projects on the go at any given time, some things can take months (or even years) to finish.
Be warned - I do use a strange mix of metric and old measurement, I blame that on the fact I was born in 1970 just as the UK went metric! I am fluent in both cm and inches, metres and yards and use them randomly with no obvious consistency. I cook in ounces as my weighing scales are the old fashioned kind with brass weights. I apologise for this and will try to add conversions to my tutorials when I think of it!
I would really like to just share my projects and ideas and hope you find them interesting or inspiring. The purpose of this site is to pass on to you some of the craft skills, tips and enthusiasm that was nurtured in me by my mum and grandmas. Read more about that here where I explain where the blog name Sum of their Stories comes from.
Have a poke around, use the drop down menus up at the top of the page for all the different types of crafts or click through here:
Sewing & Embroidery | Upcycling & Recycling Projects | Knitting & Crochet
Papercrafts - including card making | Jewellery | Recipes & Things to Eat
Holiday Projects - Christmas, Easter, Valentines and Halloween
Everything Else - all the craft ideas that don’t fit in the other categories
You’ll find lots of craft ideas that you might be interested in.
Julie
