Make & Do's 1st Birthday

First of all, let me apologise for taking a week to get around to writing this - it has been another busy week of looking after the people kitten and working my bamboo fibre socks off!

Last Sunday was the first birthday of the ridiculously awesome fabric shop Make & Do Emporium, and I was invited along to their birthday party.  Now, as some of you will be aware, I live dangerously close to this shop, in fact, it's the closest shop to my house, and as such, I've become friends with Mrs.Make&Do (aka Kirsten), so I basically wanted to use this opportunity to tell you a little bit about the birthday party and also a little bit about Kirsten.

This is basically what Make&Do looks like inside - so many beautiful rolls of fabric on the shelves to the left, buttons and things to your right - every time I visit I see something new - and then there's fat quarters on the tables.  The furthest away table is used for workshops and for craft club; the full programme for each is available on their website (linked above).  I've been to a few craft club sessions and also made a lampshade at a workshop here, and highly recommend both of them to fellow Bristol based crafty folk (and non-crafty folk that are all fingers and no thumbs, it's still fun).

At the birthday there were gorgeous little cupcakes with button icing, and tea served in beautiful vintage cups.  There was also cherryade, because apparently it's not a party unless there's cherryade...

There was also plenty of time to chat, shop and pick up information about upcoming workshops and craft club sessions.

Something I've always loved about Make&Do is its atmosphere - it's so welcoming, and it's also a very child friendly shop!  I took the people kitten with me, he crawled about, shouted loudly, skirted about the chairs while I accidentally bought several fat quarters (not quite sure how that happened), flipped through sample books and chased balloons.

All in all, it was a rather lovely afternoon, but something that was particularly special about it, was seeing Mrs Make&Do back in the shop and looking so well again.  You see, in about May, Kirsten was paralysed by Guillain Barre Syndrome, and has only recently returned home from a long stay in hospital.  During her time in hospital, she had intensive physio and OT, learning to eat and walk again. 

GBS isn't something I had even heard of before, as I'm sure many other people haven't either - and that's why raising awareness with medical staff as well as the average Joe is so important.  Since leaving hospital, Kirsten has set up a Just Giving page for GAIN... She is currently just £15 shy of her £250 target, so if you can spare a couple of quid, then please please do. If you wanted to pop into the shop or visit Make&Do online, then please do too! :-)