Inspiration Challenge for May – get involved!

Pinch, punch, first of the month! And today I am absolutely delighted to be able to bring you an Inspiration Challenge for the month of May! Some of you may have already heard of the (famous) inspiration challenge and some of you might be completely new to it, so I’m going to start at the beginning and see if I can’t encourage you to take part! 

The inspiration challenge began on the LucyLovesYa.com blog where ‘inspiration is everything’ (please check out Lucy’s blog, it’s amazing!) and the idea of the challenge is to create something (anything!) in response to an image or item that is the proposed inspiration starting-point. Previously china tea-cups, matroyshka dolls and vintage necklaces have been the inspiration, and over the past few months there have been many amazing contributions from crafters, sewer, cooks, bloggers and artists – here’s some of the amazing items that the contributors have made:

Lucy has very kindly passed the inspiration challenge baton on to me and I’m going to do my best to continue it in the same way. So I will share an image or item each month and challenge you all to get involved and make something, and please also get involved by sending in your suggestions for future inspiration challenges to [email protected] 🙂 Here are the results of last month’s inspiration challenge, which you’ve probably already seen on the LucyLoveYa blog post. I was amazed by the variety and quality of the items produced based on the matroyshka dolls – keep up the good work!

So, here’s the fun part – the challenge! I am proposing a new theme for the month of May based on my recent experience – my trusty old Jones sewing machine gave up and died last week, so I’ve had to replace it with a new jazzy modern Janome machine (thanks very much to Lucy for the advice on which machine to choose!). As much as I like my whizzy new machine, I can’t help thinking back to how sturdy and well, stylish old sewing machines were, so I’ve snapped a pic of my back-up one-stitch-option Seamstress sewing machine and my good friend Meg has loaned me her grandma’s old hand-powered Singer so that I can use them for this month’s inspiration challenge!

So please have a go a creating something inspired by vintage sewing machines and I can’t wait to see what you’ve made! I know a lot of us rely on (and love!) our sewing machines, so hopefully it’s a challenge that’s close to our hearts 😀 Let me know how you get on and if you do rustle something  up please email me your photos of your creations by the 28th of May to [email protected]. I will share everyone’s results at the start of June and I will include your site link if you have one. As Lucy says it doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or experienced and it’s not a competition – the aim is to just have a bit of fun and share your creations with other like-minded people!

Related articles

• Last month’s Inspiration Challenge (LucyLovesYa.com)
• Button up! Upcycling vintage buttons into jewellery (cassiefairy.com)
• Padded letters craft project (cassiefairy.com)
• One of my absolute favourite things to make (cassiefairy.com)
• Making a skirt from vintage patterns (cassiefairy.com)