I was invited by Pinterest to go to an embroidery class at Hand & Lock, an amazing embroiders based just off Oxford Street. They have been around since 1767 (mind blown) and embroidered for Micheal Jackson (the iconic military jacket!), the Queen and Marilyn Monroe, to name a few..

The studio is amazing, colourful cotton, threads and embroidered goods everywhere, it maintains a very British aesthetic with flags hanging off the ceiling and old paper goods stacked up high.

Before the event I had never embroidered in my life, only sewn giant lions and attempted to make shift dresses (badly). Oh the things I learned!

First off, goldwork is for the pro’s. It is super time consuming but ultimately satisfying like any repetitive creative task. If you can do this, I salute you! It’s an amazing skill and to get it perfect and neat is super impressive!
There is also a reason hand embroidered items are expensive. A LOT of time and love goes into this, it took almost two hours to embroider a tiny leaf!  Looking at these photos now I feel even more impressed than I would have felt before the event…

Pinterest cake pops, oh they were good… (naughty)
Some ‘here’s what I did earlier’, how amazing!


Perri’s leaf, mine was only half as photogenic… Perri is also super lovely and works at Mastered, which I’d not really heard much about before, but it looks like it has some pretty interesting online courses.

It was actually so good to get to know some other people who use Pinterest lots, as there is barely any social interaction on there usually and I met some lovely people. My obsession with that website continues!