Red Ted celebrates winning the Hillarys Craft Competition 2015!

Yesterday, I had some amazing news. The kind that shocks you so much – in a good way – that you can’t speak and simply point to your email when your husband asks “what’s happened?!”. You watch his expression as he reads through the message, looking to spot the moment when he too realises, and confirms what you didn’t believe with your own eyes, that you’ve won. Yes, I received one of the most amazing emails of my life yesterday when Hillarys got in touch to tell me that I was the winner of their Craft Competition 2015. Gobsmacked is not a strong enough word to describe how I felt last night! I still can’t believe it.You may remember that I shared a blog post about my little Red Ted last month. I loved every moment of making him, and, although I had a couple of unpicking-and-restitching hiccups, he was a fun project that got me back behind the needle of a sewing machine after a few months without crafting. It’s kick-started a whole host of craft ideas and I’m skipping towards my sewing machine almost every day now to do mini-projects and clothing repairs. All thanks to Red Ted helping me get back in the saddle. Only a week ago I was told that my little Red Ted had made it into the top ten shortlist of Hillary’s Craft Competition and I absolutely couldn’t believe it – especially when I saw all the other fantastic creations on their competition board on Pinterest. I’d checked out the other entries after submitting Red Ted and I was in awe of all the amazing projects that the other crafters had come up with – cushions, aprons, toys, picnic set, clothing and even fabric flowers! I’m already planning to try out some of these projects myself but the board is so packed full of inspirational ideas that I don’t know where to start! During my week as a ‘finalist’ I’d spotted a few repins of Red popping up on my Pinterest feed, and some ‘likes’ had been appearing on Facebook. I was thrilled that other people liked Red Ted as much as I did and every tweet of support meant the world to me. Even though I was getting a lot of love for Red, all the other shortlisted projects were amazing, highly skilled and really fun, so I was convinced that Red and I were going to be applauding another winner as the results were announced.So you can imagine just how much I couldn’t believe it when I found out that I’d won. I read and re-read my email. I double checked the announcement on Twitter. I took to Facebook and every update I saw seemed to confirm that little Red Ted was the winner but it was only when I was being hugged by hubby that I realised it was true and I burst into tears.I am thrilled and truly grateful that the lovely judges and so many of you liked my creation enough to vote for me as the winner of Hillarys Craft Competition 2015. It means everything to me, and little red Ted is pretty chuffed too! Thank you all so much for supporting ‘us’ in the competition, and cheers!