Cosy coffee time

Hooray for September! It's a month of new starts as a new school year begins, so it's time to seek out the PE kits and look for reading books. Seasonal shifts are noticeable as temperatures start to fall and the days become shorter. All in all, it's the start of the cosy season...and we love it!

One major event on the calendar for September is Macmillan's annual World's Biggest Coffee Morning, which last year raised over £27 million for the charity. Wow, what an achievement!

We enjoy doing our own bit of fundraising for Macmillan, a charity that is close to the hearts of so many people, not only us at Jolly Red but also many of our stitchers and their friends and families. Together, you have so far helped us to raise a total of over £4,000 for the charity over the years that we've been involved.

Mugs and Hugs was a big success in 2014, and this year we have designed a new Coffee Morning tapestry called Coffee With Friends, with part of the proceeds of each sale being donated to Macmillan Cancer Support. We hope you like this one as much as you did Mugs and Hugs.

As you can see, the cheerful design looks fantastic either framed as a picture or made into cushion.

We've tried to keep the same happy feel as Mugs and Hugs, again with a coffee morning theme. Taking on board some comments from tea drinkers about Mugs and Hugs, we've included the word 'Tea' in the design too, and a teapot as we don't want anyone to feel left out. You'll also spot a coffee pot, bunting, flowers, teatime crockery and a lucky horseshoe - and a cat and a dog. It's amazing what you can fit into a 7"x7" design!

Designing a special tapestry is our way of getting involved in Macmillan's big fundraiser. It enables us to reach a far wider audience than we would if we held a coffee morning at our remote HQ. Most people can't find us at the best of times!

Perhaps you'd like to host your own coffee morning, or find out about a coffee morning near you? Click here to see what's happening on Macmillan's site.

We will donate £5 to Macmillan from the sale of each complete Coffee With Friends kit or Coffee With Friends canvas only* ordered online or over the phone, or collected from our workshop.

Please share as we'd really like to get the word out about our new design. Thank you!

With best wishes as always,

Kelly

PS *Quote code canvas at the checkout or over the phone if you'd like to stitch Coffee With Friends using wool from your own stash. For updates on our Coffee With Friends fundraising, keep an eye on our Facebook page.

Anything to post?

When the children go back to school in September, it's as though a switch has been flicked. The weather changes and it suddenly starts to feel slightly autumnal, and the days become shorter. It's tapestry season! Rumour has it that fires have already been lit, and the heating turned on in some parts of the country.

Our Making Up Service gets really busy, in the run up to Christmas. Hands up, anyone who's stitching a Christmas stocking!

This year we will have to be strict about our October 31st deadline so if you have a tapestry to post for our Making Up Service, please send it nice and early. Perhaps now would be a good time to dig out any tapestries you never quite finished earlier in the year? There's still plenty of time to get them to us.

A word about fabric

We stock three ranges of fabric that we use to make up your tapestries - a wool blend range which is sturdy and 'kind of matches the tapestry weave', a cotton range with a slight texture to it, and a cotton velvet range.

Occasionally the manufacturers discontinue a shade and it's usually one of our favourites. The most recent disappearances are in the wool blend range, where we've lost a gorgeous light purply/heathery shade, and a buttermilk yellow.

If you're sending in a tapestry for our Making Up Service and have chosen one of these, I'm afraid that we may have to decide on an alternative shade. Next to disappear will be our lovely 'beigey, brown paper bag' wool blend fabric, which has been so popular over the years as a neutral backing for many of our tapestry designs. We were fortunate to have warning of this one's likely demise so bought up a lot of it as soon as we heard. Sadly, we are on our last roll now.

On a happier note, the 'beautiful blue' velvet (a gorgeous shade that works really well with Silent Night Christmas stocking) that we've been waiting for since early July will be with us - so we're told - on September 19th!!

After such a long a wait we are expecting it to be even more beautiful than it was before.