Our Celebration of Sewing

This weekend we had our annual celebration of sewing which takes the form of The Hope & Gloria Junior Sewing Bee Grand Final.

In my last post I explained how we reached this point through round one of the competition and yesterday afternoon Allison, Debbie, Sarah, and Sophie from the Hope & Gloria Team and I guided our amazing finalists through the last stage of the annual competition.

One of my absolute favourite aspects of my role at Hope & Gloria is designing all of the projects that we make in our clubs. Yesterday afternoon I was delighted to hand the designing reins over to thirty of our sewing club members so that they designed and made their own cushions and bags in a bid to win first prize in 2016.

This year we had two overall winning categories - one for school years 3& 4 and one for school years 5 & 6. After seeing the brilliant creations from round one, it was no surprise that this year's standard was incredibly high and choosing just one cushion from each category was very difficult.

Follow the yellow arrows below to see the winning entries....

Our winner in the younger age category was Amber Moores from Warfield Primary School who gave us a well thought out design that showed a brilliant understanding of the use of colour and space as well as beautiful stitching for her age.

Hannah Mackie was our first prize winner in the older age group. Hannah managed to sew designs on to the front and back of her cushion in the allocated time of 75 minutes - a daytime scene on the front and night time one on the back featuring the moon and a bat. The back of the cushion also featured a pocket for a tooth for the tooth fairy to collect. Hannah's inventiveness of design, function and beautiful stitching meant that this was a truly well deserved first place.

Well done to Amber and Hannah! Also, I must also say a huge well done to all of our contestants that joined us yesterday - you were all amazing and I don't think I have ever found it so hard to judge a competition.

I am happy to report that no-one left empty-handed. As well as taking home their beautiful creations, all of the girls were given a goody bag containing Hope & Gloria sewing supplies and some sweet treats.

Well done once again to everyone - we hope to see you all again at next years Hope & Gloria Junior Sewing Bee!

Bee-ing Creative - Round One of The Hope & Gloria Sewing Bee 2016

I have been dying to share these fantastic pictures with you. They are the round one winners projects from our annual inter-school sewing competition. I think they are pretty fantastic.

Now in it's second year, the 2016 competition looks set to be as successful as when we launched it last summer. Once again we were overwhelmed with round one entries and it was incredibly difficult for the Hope & Gloria Team and I to pick out just 30 children to take through to our grand final which takes place next year.

The aim of the Hope & Gloria Junior Sewing Bee is to give young sewing enthusiasts a platform to showcase their talents and skills in the same spirit as sports tournaments, dance shows or other children's competitions. It is a celebration of the amazing results that can be achieved with a needle, thread, fabric and a large sprinkling of creativity.

In this year's final we'll be asking our finalists to add their own designs to either a bag or cushion measuring 15cm x 15cm. They will be working on their designs at home over the next few days and some of the lovely ladies from Team H&G will be on hand next weekend to help them realise their designs.

Everyone from Hope & Gloria is very excited about next week's final and we can't wait to see the lovely creations that will take shape. I have a feeling that it is going to be very hard for me to judge a winner but I look forward to sharing all the news and results from The Hope & Gloria Junior Sewing Bee 2016 with you next week.