A busy weekend!

Well, for once I haven't been near my sewing machine this weekend and have instead spent some quality time with my family!

Yesterday afternoon, my sister, nieces and I dodged the raindrops and spent a lovely couple of hours browsing around the Hidden Lane Festival in the Finnieston area of Glasgow.  

For those not in the know, The Hidden Lane, is a community of creative businesses, bands and artists all tucked away into the quirkiest warren of studio and office spaces I've ever seen.  If you didn't know it was there, you'd likely walk straight past the entrance on Argyle Street without giving it a second glance.  Previous residents include groups such as Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand and judging by the quality of the bands playing at the festival, there are likely to be more that follow in their successful footsteps!  

In any case, needless to say, there were some great stalls showcasing some of the best of Glasgow's independent businesses, live music, fashion shows from the Lane's three resident designers and a great atmosphere!  

Lily made a beeline straight for the catwalk and insisting on climbing up and stomping about - she was definitely born to perform!  

We also managed to fit in a wee visit to two lovely shops called The Shop of Interest and Made With Love Finnieston where I found a great vintage shirt for Albin and discussed the possibility of supplying some ready-to-wear childrenswear as soon as I find the time to make some up!

I then came home to the lovely news that one of my oldest friends Dawn had just got engaged the night before to her wonderful partner Iain - so much excited chatter ensued and I am already looking forward to what will be a fabulous wedding next spring!

Today, visitors to the Heads of Ayr Farm Park would have been forgiven for thinking they'd had a few to drink when Ivy and Lily made up one pair of 3 sets of twin girls on a twinny day out!  

Checking out the chicks!

I had been a wee bit worried that there might not be enough to make it a worthwhile visit for such littlies (I&L being the oldest at 15m), but there was actually plenty to entertain and keep them busy!  There was a fantastic range of animals, from teeny fluffy marmosets to big but friendly horses in the stables, a playpark with swings etc, trampolines that they loved scampering about on and bouncing on their botties and a nice wee soft play area, specifically reserved for littler thrill-seekers.  We had no problem getting about with our double buggies which is always a blessing and all in all it was a great value family day out!

I rounded off the weekend by popping out to get the lovely Dawn a congratulations card from the sumptuous Pierrot et Coco round the corner and ended up spending a nice half-hour chatting with the fabulous Morven and Pierrot about the important things in life, namely kids and fabric! Their shop truly is a revelation in all things beautiful and good taste from unique children's gifts and clothes to luxury cosmetics with jewellery, teas, home decor items and a small selection of haberdashery items in between!  Definitely worth a visit if you're in the Shawlands area!

So, all in all a busy weekend, but one that has left me refreshed in mind if not in body and raring to go with some new ideas for the week!  Check back soon for a new design and the first peek at my first ready to wear collection!

I've jumped!

And that is all... :oD

0-60 in 30 years!

Well, after becoming an avid reader of Noisette Marketing’s blog, The Academy, and reading a spectrum of different stories inspired by Isa’s “What’s your story?” campaign, I’ve decided to take the plunge and dive in too.  So, here’s my story…

If I had to choose one word to describe my life up until 2010 I think it would have to be “coasting”.  After being a very bright and active child, always on the go from dance class, to music lessons, to sports clubs, my teenage years saw the onset of what I can only describe as pure, distilled lethargy!  One by one my hobbies were dropped, the effort I put into my schoolwork decreased and I made getting by on the minimum amount of effort required an art form.  

This continued into my university years - I managed to graduate with a 2.1 in French despite the late nights and even later mornings*, and suddenly I found myself in the real world with not a clue of what to do with my life beyond moving to Paris to be with my French boyfriend within days of finishing my finals!

It was in Paris that I fell into being a bilingual legal secretary.  I took the job thinking that it would just be a stop-gap for a few months while applying for “a graduate job”.  Little did I know that the job market in France is completely different to the UK and with no idea of what I actually wanted to do, a move to Glasgow and 5 years later, I was still stuck in an office doing a job that couldn’t have been less “me” if I’d tried. 

Coasting, coasting, coasting…

The first big enormous(!) change came a couple of months after marrying my lovely Frenchman at the end of May 2009.  After getting over the lovely surprise of finding myself pregnant, an early ultrasound scan showed not one but TWO blobs with healthily beating hearts!  To say we were shocked would be an understatement, but after a tough few months of double pregnancy, on 12 March 2010, we became the ridiculously proud parents of identical twin girls – Ivy and Lily – the lights of my life.  

After the whirlwind of relentless feeding, winding, nappy changing and sleep deprivation (x 2!) eased up and I was still in one piece, I started feeling like nothing was a match for me!  I was a mum of twins - nothing could scare me! Having my girls had awoken some kind of raw motivation buried deep inside and I started to regret all the time I’d wasted coasting and doing nothing while I’d still had so much time on my hands!  

That Autumn, I bought my first sewing machine and started to teach myself to sew.  Typically, I only really started to get into it just as my long-dreaded return to work arrived (albeit only 2 days a week now). 

I joined an online craft forum called The Crafty Bums (to which I owe a heck of a lot) and dropped myself in at the deep end by offering to make a few extra Christmas stockings for people while making some for Ivy and Lily’s first Christmas.  The ladies I made for were delighted and a few makes later, including some fleece birdie dresses for the girls, I decided to start a page on Facebook that I called Two for Tea Creations.

Then, I don’t quite know how it happened, but friends started asking me to make things, then friends of friends and before I knew it, the miracle of Facebook meant that complete strangers were ordering (from ME!) and actually liking what they received!  

Six months later and the slow trickle of orders has grown to be a flourishing wee business with 800+ likers on Facebook and a 3-6 week waiting list!  My skills and confidence have also grown amazingly and I am never happier than when I am designing and making new items and adding them to my repertoire of available designs.  The feedback from happy customers is all the motivation I need to keep going and believe in myself – something I have always had trouble doing.   

My days are a whirl of cuddles and thread, needles and nappies, stories and design, fun and fabric – and I love every minute of it, no matter how exhausting it is juggling toddler twins and a business!

The only blight on this rosy picture so far has been the two days a week I have had to leave my gorgeous and funny babies at nursery and my sewing machine all alone at home and go to my “real” job.  After months of spending 40% of my working week miserable, claustrophobic and depressed and the other 60% overheating my sewing machine trying to squeeze in a week’s worth of sewing into my three days “off”, I have finally decided that enough is enough. 

So, this week I am going to take the biggest risk of my life so far and hand in my notice at work.  It has been my desire for years to work for myself in “something”, and to now find myself in the position to be able to (with a lot of support and encouragement from my wonderful husband) is just a dream come true!

So there you have it.  This is my story so far, but I feel like it is really only just beginning.  I know that momentous changes are afoot and I am facing them with equal measures of fear and excitement.  But I figure that no one made a success out of anything without taking at least one big risk, right?

Coasting to full-throttle in (nearly!) 30 years – at least I’ve got there in the end!

So, come on and join in the sharing – what’s your story?

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[*]  I just had a flashback of my 19 year-old self having an animated but serious discussion with a fellow student about how ridiculous it was for the uni to schedule 9am seminars and expect everyone to be there!  Considering my day now starts somewhere between 5 and 6am, this memory did make me chuckle!

How do you know when to jump?

…and will the parachute open?

These are the questions that are preoccupying a very large part my thoughts at the moment and being a bear of little brain, I'm not sure I have the space to spare!

What I mean is, I currently run Two for Tea on a part time basis (although my husband would probably disagree with me considering how much of my evenings and weekends is also spent on it!) My main sewing days are Monday to Wednesday when I frantically burn rubber on my sewing machine, trying to get custom orders out to (hopefully) happy customers all the while trying to keep two one-year-olds happy, clean(ish), fed and in one piece.

Thursdays and Fridays are spent sitting at a desk feeling frustrated, bored, downtrodden and claustrophobic while my beautiful babies are at nursery and my piles of fabric are sitting at home just waiting to be cut and transformed into something special and unique for a little girl or boy.

Considering that the amount left over from my salary each month after the nursery gobbles up the lion's share would make very meagre pickings for a mouse, I have been wondering more and more - is it really worth it? Is it really worth spending 40% of my working week miserable and the other 60% trying to cram 5 days' work into 3, just to be ever-so-slightly more comfortable? Granted, having a job offers more security, but I am really starting to think that that's just not enough for us any more.  The way my "real" job is making me feel is starting to creep into my home life too and that's just not fair on my loved ones.

So, after discussing the issue for the nth time with my wonderful husband today who said he'll support me and nearly made me cry, I think I'm gonna do it. I think I'm going to jump and just trust that my parachute is a beautiful rainbow of silk that will steer me to safety and not a dud that sends me plumetting back to earth with a bang!

I think…...

It takes two baby!

So, seeing as I promised that this blog would be a mix of sewing, business and life, I thought I'd do a wee post about life with two in tow!

Ever since being told at my first early scan at 8 weeks pregnant "here's the heart beating away...and here's another one!" [cue jaw dropping and some naughty sweary words], being a mum of twins has become a huge part of my identity, so I guess it would be remiss of me not to talk about it!

After getting over the initial shock and then a period of several weeks where we were told that our babies were a very rare type of identical twin at risk of not surviving pregnancy, (thankfully our consultant discovered that this was not the case about half-way through), we have always been absolutely delighted to have our twin girls Ivy and Lily and we still can't believe how lucky we are or that they are here at all - twins happen to other people don't they?! 

A question I get asked on a regular basis is: how do you do it?

I think that most people imagine that twins are double the work (if only I had a pound for every time I hear "double trouble" when out and about!), but honestly, they aren't!  Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to say it's easy - the first few months especially are just a blur of 2-hr long feeding sessions, nappies, exhaustion - but the joy of having two wonderful little people far outweighs any negatives

Ever since they first started giggling at each other at only a few months old, they have been thick as thieves.  Now they are on the brink of toddlerdom, they are (mostly!) happy to play their day away together, which luckily for me allows me to get on with sewing at one end of the room, while they potter about at the other.  

I try to always find time each day to sit and cuddle and read stories and sing songs - Lily especially is very musical already and loves singing - Ivy is more of a dancer!  But generally, they are very independent wee souls and have far too much fun entertaining each other to need me to keep them occupied!  

I do have a lot of guilt though that I could spend more quality time with them if I didn't have my business, but I'm hoping that as soon as I am able to go full time in Two for Tea, I'll have more time to set aside for my wonderful girls instead of cramming in as much work as I can in the 3 days I have at home during the week.

Anyway, this post is getting rather lengthy now - I did say that I have verbal diarrhoea!  So maybe, I'll answer the other questions I often get asked about twins in another post!  I'll leave you for now though with a (slightly adapted) poem I have seen several times over the last year or two but that still never fails to bring a tear to my eye!

There's two to wash, there's two to dry,

there's two who argue, there's two who cry.

One's in the mud, having a ball the other holds a crayon, another marked wall.

Some days seem endless, my patience grows thin.

Why was I chosen to be a mother of twins?

The answer comes clear at the end of each day, as I tuck them in bed and I contentedly say...

There's two to kiss, there's two to hug; and best of all, there are two to love.

Thank Crunchie for Facebook!

So, I was chatting to my aunt who I've not seen in a while the other day and filling her in on what I've been doing with Two for Tea, and it struck me that had I tried to start a sewing business even just 2 or 3 years ago, there is no way on earth I could have made it a going concern in such a short space of time.  In fact, I'm not sure I would have started a business at all, had it not been for Facebook.

Whilst I have many a grievance with Facebook for varying reasons, I just can't deny that I owe it a hell of a large drink for providing me with the perfect platform to turn a low-key hobby into a budding business.

Facebook is just so interactive - I love being able to engage with my lovely "likers", share ideas and photos, get feedback, chat, see their joy at receiving their special orders, network with other businesses, run competitions and, dare I say it, even make friends! 

Seeing so many other small, crafty business spring up all the time, I just can't help but marvel how these days, all you need is an idea, a bit of determination and elbow grease and a few happy customers, and before you know it with a bit of turbo-charged word of mouth marketing, you actually have a business!

So, thank you Facebook - I couldn't do it without you kid!

Inspiration station

Well, as anyone who has been following Two for Tea for a while will know, it is my plan to start making collections of limited edition, ready-to-wear clothes alongside continuing with a certain amount of custom orders.

Unfortunately, for one reason or another, it's taking me longer to get to that point than I originally thought, but that hasn't stopped me brainstorming like crazy!

In my mind's eye when I think of this first collection, I see a row of pretty but practical dresses and rompers on a washing line.  Each in a gorgeous nostalgic check print and each with an individual hand-embellished applique.

The working title for this collection is Picnic Princess, but I'm not 100% sold on it - I tend to avoid the term "princess" in relation to little girls - there is enough of the pink fluffy tat out there pushing the princess ideal.  Anyone got any ideas for me?

Anyway, here is the visual representation of my brainstorm - an eclectic mix as usual!  Feel free to leave feedback...

The awkward 2nd post!

OK, so I've taken the first (baby)step and written my first blog post introducing myself...so what do I write now?!

Well, I guess the thing that springs to mind is to tell you more about my crafty baby (and baby is about right - it seems to be taking up just as much time as my real babies -ha!), Two for Tea Creations.

My first clothing makes!

As I said in my first post, I kind of fell into sewing as a business - it was really still a fairly new hobby to me when I was first asked to make something for someone else.  Since then, I've been learning as I go along, gaining confidence with each positive comment from customers and trying more and more ambitious designs.

My first custom order!

After dabbling in a few different items, I've discovered that my true passion lies in making clothing rather than blankets etc. - I'd love to be a quilter, but I think I need the quick kick I get out of seeing a dress or a romper take form as soon as the first few pieces are stitched together, rather than the slow burn of piecing together a quilt bit by bit!

The thing I'm loving the most at the moment is brainstorming new ideas and trying out more complicated designs - there is nothing so satisfying as holding something in your hands (or even better, seeing it on a small person!) that had previously just been a vague idea wafting around your head!

The result of a brain-storm!

My main problem these days though is trying to create the time to try out these ideas whilst still working through my custom orders waiting list!  I am in no way complaining though - I wouldn't even be writing this blog if it wasn't for the lovely people who are willing to put their trust in me to make their little ones something special!

So, what's in the future for Two for Tea?  Well, my next goal is to start creating collections of ready-to-wear clothes alongside the custom work.  I feel like it'd be the ideal way to really get in touch with my creative side and (hopefully) produce some really special items that are uniquely "Two for Tea"!  Beyond that, I truly and desperately want *need* to quit my "real job" and go full-time with my budding wee business - I have all my fingers and toes crossed that each day, hour and minute spent sewing and improving and building up my customer base is another step forward to achieving that goal!

Latest design

I'm hoping this blog will be a great way to chart my progress and focus my often very flighty mind into really being the best I can be.

Thanks for reading this far - as you will see, verbal continence is not my biggest strength! x

Dipping a toe in...

Well, this is my first ever blog post so I guess it'd be a good idea to start at the beginning and tell you a bit about who I am and why I'm here…

My name is Hannah, I am fast approaching 30 and I am the very lucky winner of fruitbat twin girlies Ivy and Lily who are 14 months old and whose favourite hobbies include hiding in boxes, playing with pretty ribbon and shouting "cat" at inanimate objects - the twins I mean, not me!  

 I am married to a tall, dark and handsome Frenchman called Albin, a semi-professional photographer and all-round rock.  We live in a leafy-ish area of Glasgow, that is not noted for too many stabbings or heart attacks.

Although I have always loved to be creative, dabbling particuarly in graphic and web design here and there, it was only while on maternity leave from my not-in-the-slightest-bit-creative office job that I bought my first sewing machine and discovered an inherited but previously dormant passion for sewing.

After starting with a few basic items such as hats and bags, I dropped myself in the deep end by agreeing to make some personalised Christmas stockings for people.  Through the wonder that is Facebook, that somehow developed into making children's clothes for friends and friends of friends and before long, Two for Tea Creations was born!

So in the space of 6 months, I have somehow gone from complete sewing novice to having a blooming wee custom clothing business with a 6-week waiting list and 600 fans and rising - I keep having to pinch myself!  With a bit of luck and hard work, I'm hoping that it'll start paying enough bills to get out of the office for good and firmly behind the sewing machine where I really feel like me!

So, what do I hope to achieve from a blog?  Good question!  Well, for a start remembering to update it regularly would be a good thing, although judging by the countless diaries I had as a child that never got much beyond 2nd January, that might not be as easy as I'm hoping!  

Really, I would like this to be a mix of posts relating to Two for Tea, sewing & crafting in general (maybe a few tutorials here and there) and my rambling reflections on meandering through life as a twin crafty mummy in business.  

If that sounds like your bag, then do stick around and make yourself a cuppa and I look forward to getting to know you too!