March 14

Spring in action with your stitching!

Welcome! Hi to all our lovely stitchers and readers, it's great to have you with us once again. And if you're a newbie, it's lovely to be talking to you! You're receiving our newsletter as you've bought something from us, you've signed up to our mailing list, or you've come across us online. Well, you're all very welcome and I hope you enjoy reading about our unique designs and what we're up to at the moment. Enjoy the read, then get back to your stitching quick, you've no time to lose!

I thought you might like to see this this picture of our stand at the recent trade show we attended which I'm focussing on in this edition of our newsletter, it was my home for 3 days so I'm happy to show it to you!

Best Sellers

Last month we were very busy at Craft Hobby and Stitch International, at the NEC in Birmingham. If you've never heard of it, it's the craft and stitching show of choice for trade, and it's an absolute treasure trove of every craft you can imagine! It's just for trade customers, so the three days are full of chats with stitching and craft shop owners, online retailers and making lots of new contacts from every part of the crafting world.

As some of you know, our cross stitch range contains more than 600 designs, so it could be pretty hard for retailers to choose which ones they'd like to stock in their stores. So we've sorted this out by providing them with a top ten, which I thought you might like to see. It's a mixture of our best selling caricatures, bikes and cars to enable retailers to show off the best of our work to their customers. And I'm going to show them off to you, my newsletter posse!

So, in no particular order, here they are.

There are 3 bikes in the top ten, two Harleys and a Norton.The Harleys are the Ultra Glide in burgundy and the Heritage Softail, which has some lovely detail. Both kits cost £29.95. The Norton Dominator is even more of a bargain, costing £24.95. It really catches the spirit of the classic vintage British motorbike, which I'm sure a lot of our stitchers will be very familiar with!

The top ten also contains 2 camper vans, as VW campers as a group have been our best sellers since we started in this business, and continue to be so now. One is a cariature and the other one isn't, so you can take your pick as they both retail at £29.95. Both are available in a number of different colours, so you really do have a plethora of choices.

There are 3 cars in our top ten, but they couldn't be more different. Our caricature Mini design is a universal hit, and is available in lots of colours, as is the real car itself. A significantly faster car is next, the Subaru Impreza. It is featured in World Rally colours and looks very striking, a must for all motor racing fans. Finally for cars, we have a Land Rover in the classic green that we all recognise. It retails at £29.95, as does the caricature Mini, the Subaru being a little cheaper at £24.95.

To finish our top ten, we have 2 final designs that don't really fit into any of the previous categories (by the way, we pride ourselves on not fitting into categories!), our classic Formula 1 design and the very popular Eddie Stobart design. Eddie caught everyone's eye at the trade show, along with his newer little brother the Eddie Refrigerated lorry that we featured in the last newsletter. The Eddie and F1 designs are the biggest in the top ten and fit into our top price band of £35.95, and they are definitely worth it! They make a fantastic project for any level of stitcher, with some simple block sections and some slightly more complicated bits too - a perfect combination.

If you'd like to take a closer look at any of these designs or perhaps buy them online, click on any of their names or pictures and you'll be transported to the appropriate page on our website, and you're off!