Spring Challenge 2010 - My Favourite Things.

On Tuesday we had our second Spring challenge. The first challenge of the year and our third altogether. The theme for this one was Favourite Things which left it wide open to what people could do. This time though a new challenge was presented. It couldn't be larger than A4. This was due to our limited space but it also made it more interesting.


Ginnie did a quilted piece as quilting is one of her favourites. She used her cats Kitty and Billy as inspiration since they are also her favourites. The colouring of the cats exactly matches them.

Margaret put together a cross stitch sampler with a range of her favourite things and then framed it. She changed the colours of the charts to fit in with the theme. As you can see her favourite colour is red. She also changed the colouring of the women in the charts to look like her.

I made a book bag as books are my favourites. I then hand embroidered a scene which reminds me of one of my favourite books as a child, The Secret Garden. Within that I added in other favourites; dragons, fairy tales, owls, blue, poppies, bluebells and buttons.

Elaine loves baking and so made a cake as her entry. She also loves cake decorating, coming along to stitch n bitch and embroidered flowers which is why she decorated the cake this way. I have to say the group also loved it as they got to eat it later (and it does taste as good as it looks).

Alison stitched a lovely sunflower scene. Her favourites include cross stitch and sunflowers.


Roberta also did some cross stitch for her entry. Cross stitch is one of her favourites and if you remember back to her interview she would love to challenge herself with some more cross stitch. She also loves oriental designs.

Helens entry showed her love of scrapbooking, cardmaking and paper crafts in general. She created this lovely folder which held a whole range of her facourites.

A little mini scrap book filled with her favourite photographs.

Her favourite music.

A lovely cupcake hard which contains her favourite cake recipe.


A holder for her favourite bookmark which was made by Laura.

And last but not least a mini scrapbook with photo's from our group and her finished creations.

Donna did a cross stitch sampler which showed her favourite things. She also knitted and crocheted then attached the pieces too it to show examples of her favourite things.

Ginnie's friend, Joyce, came along again to judge. She says its one of the more stressful thing she does, coming along and having to chose but enjoys seeing all the entries.

Aunty who is over for a visit kindly stepped in as our second judge. I bet when she arrived she didn't know we would put her to work this time.



Elaine's beautiful cake won for the original entry. Everyone agreed that the flowers looked like actual embroidery. So pretty it was such a shame to cut it. The guilt though only lasted for as long as it took to taste it.

Helen won for the adapted entry. All those lovely little pieces inside that folder and so much work too. Everyone loved looking through them.


Joyce kindly brought along a bottle of champagne as a runner up prize (Elaine and Helen were awarded £25 of Hobbycraft vouchers). This was awarded to Margaret for her cross stitch sampler. I don't know if any of you remember but Margaret won the first challenge we had also for cross stitch.

Due to how close it was to our weekend away I think a lot of people forgot that it was challenge night. I know I almost did. There weren't quite as many entries as last time. However there was still that wide range of talent we have had with the last three. With luck we will have more people join in our Autumn challenge. It did though attract the attention of other customers in the store and as a result we may have another new member along next week.