An Ode to Stephenson College 

"Friends are the family you choose"

Another year has flown by, and graduation season is here again. While most of Alice's friends graduated last year, some were on four-year courses, so they got to celebrate again in 2025! 

Durham University is collegiate, and when Alice originally applied, she chose Cuthbert's, hoping to be on the Bailey. Although she received her first choice, she was gutted to find out a couple of weeks before starting that she’d been reassigned to Stephenson College. Durham gave her the option of either accepting Stephenson or deferring for a year to return to Cuth's. Unsure of what to do, we visited Stevo, and from the moment she stepped foot in the college, she was hooked!

Stephenson is one of the newer colleges and prides itself on its modern, inclusive, and forward-thinking ethos, making it the perfect fit for Alice. She made incredible friends and fully embraced college life. Her love for the college was so strong that her dad even switched from Castle SCR to Stephenson (I’m still Team Hild Bede, but it’s a close call!).

Stephenson truly lives up to its reputation as a progressive, values-driven college, with students actively embracing global citizenship and engaging in local civic service at remarkable levels (evidenced by the college being named Volunteering College of the Year).

Alice and her friends were each awarded lifetime honorary memberships, and hosting their graduation party was an absolute delight. College Principal Professor Rob Lynes and Vice Principal Katie Stobbs joined us for lunch - further proof that Stephenson really is that welcoming!

Fortunately, we live close to one of Amazon's largest distribution centers, and our local charity shops often sell items donated by them. This allowed me to justify buying single-use graduation decorations along with 200 balloons! The charity shops also had plenty of glassware and teddy bears, which I was happy to snap up ready to recycle.

Alice's friend Ella was incredible, taking charge of desktop publishing to create stunning bingo sheets, signs, favour toppers, and jam jar labels. Since I'm hopeless with computers, I was thrilled to have such professional-looking 'branding' for the printouts!

Durham University students don't actually wear Mortarboards to graduate but my Amazon haul included a rather fetching red number so I added a Stephenson motto (upcycled from a worn out shirt) and it made the perfect photo booth prop along with vintage gowns.

The party was a wonderful muti-age affair and Alice's Granny baked huge amounts of sausage rolls, cheese scones and quiches for the buffet, along with big bowls of pretty much every type of salad imaginable!

The youngest guests were primary school age so I had an excuse to craft party favours!

 

Alice enjoying Granny's buffet

  

Alice's friends gave me their Frep (Fresher's Representative), bar and shop T-shirts which I stitched up into keepsake Team Stephenson bunting and teddy bears.

The savoury buffet was followed by an ice cream bar, featuring Ella's beautiful jam-jar labels.

Personalised Bunting 

Durham University Garland

 

This week I have been upcycling 'Stevo Stash' in the form of well worn T-shirts and polo tops. Most were previously part of the bar staff uniform and had definitely seen better days!  My original plan was to create shield shaped badges which retained both the 'Durham University' and 'Stephenson College' text but the shirts were far too out of shape to allow for this!

Plan B was to blanket stitch just the main logo onto red felt and even then I still couldn't quite get them to square up! Thankfully using red thread, instead of the previous white satin stitch, proved slightly more forgiving.

 

Stephenson College is a relatively new college which proudly announces itself as "a modern, progressive, values-led college. Sustainability, innovation, global citizenship and civic engagement are the core pillars of Stephenson College life, and we believe that change starts with us".

My daughter graduated from Durham University last year, having originally applied to St. Cuthbert's College (I'm Hild and Bede so had no skin in the game!) but was then bumped to Stevo. She was pretty disappointed but as soon as she arrived at Stevo it was love at first sight!

The ethos of this fabulous college is very much echoed in the work of its current Vice Principal Katie Stobbs, and Alice's time there was definitely much richer due to Katie's amazing leadership and guidance.  It was therefore my pleasure to stitch up this little upcycled gift for her 💕  

Thank You Katie!

 

Personalised Bunting 

Appliqued Graduation Garland

Graduation season is upon us and this personalised bunting is for a very special scholar indeed. Not only did she gain entry to Oxford University, an achievement in itself, she absolutely aced it by graduating with a First Class Honours degree! 

I originally planned a Simpkin IV gift (read about him here) but my daughter said it was 'lame' 😂! Plan A duly discarded, I instead stitched up this bunting, featuring varsity style lettering and the Hertford College crest.

The shield is officially described as 'Gules, a stag's head caboshed argent, attired or, between the attires a cross pattee fitched at the foot of the last'.

In everyday day speak this translates as a red shield featuring a stag's head, cut off behind the ears and a Templar cross, with its bottom end sharpened!

As I didn't have a pattern I was very grateful that the crest has recently had a redesign, although it was still a little tricky to hand draw, cut out and then free motion embroider!

It hardly seems like yesterday that they were all starting school. I took this photo on their very first day and whilst some of the children were crying this is Jenny, my daughter Alice, and their friend Ella, all rushing in the very minute the doors opened!  

Jenny was actually the First (see what I did there!) in and her love of learning has clearly continued 🎓 Alice has just graduated from Durham University and Ella is studying dentistry.

First Day of School - St Godric's Durham 2007

 

Personalised Baby Boy Gift 

Jungle Theme Applique Bunting Garland

Cute Giraffe Pendant Flags

A friend asked me to stitch up some teal and brown bunting for her little nephew who adores giraffes. It took me a few attempts to draft a suitably cute giraffe. I then drew a 'Varsity' style font, as I felt this would balance the 'babyish' feel of their faces! The wide polka dot bias binding finally pulled it all together beautifully.

Lola was very keen to help with the sewing!

Peek-a-Boo

The giraffes and letters were all hand drawn and cut before being stitched on normal sewing machine.

Precious Baby Boy Garland DIY 

Personalised Bunting Garland Tutorial

Scroll for tutorial

↓↓↓

Yet again over a year has flown by since my last post!  It's been a busy 12 months, with a complete remodel of our downstairs but the builders have finally left now. My sewing machines were safely stowed away for the whole time and now they're not only unpacked but also newly serviced. I wonder what excuse I can use next year, if this pattern continues!

Anyway apologies over, Let me show you the adorable bunting I stitched for the newest addition to the lovely La Spada Ristorante family. We are so lucky to have this wonderful Italian restaurant just five minutes away, the food is gorgeous and the atmosphere welcoming. The family who own it treat their customers like family and even gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers when I was undergoing surgery and treatment for breast cancer.  I was therefore delighted to take the opportunity to create a gift for the chef's new baby boy.

Our house renovations included a new kitchen and TV lounge, along with a complete refit of my sewing room. I'm only letting you see two sides of that at the moment, as I haven't finished unpacking the cupboards and shelves on the other walls yet!

I'm delighted with all three rooms, their design and quality exceeded my expectations, so Paul and the team from Dragonville Interiors will also be doing our bathrooms next year!  

Sewing Room

(Still waiting for the oak bullnose bottom step!)

TV Lounge

Tutorial 

The first step is to make a template for your fabric letters and bunting flags. Simply use Microsoft Publisher/Word, or similar software, to create a 14 cm equilateral triangle and then resize your chosen font until the letters fit nicely in the middle of the triangle.  Print onto thin card and cut out.

Now take your card letters and turn them over before tracing around them onto the smooth side of a sheet of Bondaweb.  Iron onto the wrong side of the navy polka-dot fabric and cut out.....They will now be facing the right way round!    Cut the required number of pennant flags from the light blue and beige fabrics, not forgetting to cut out the same number of linings.

Peel the backing paper from your letters and place centrally onto the flag fronts and, once you're happy with the positioning, fix with a hot iron.

Using white thread sew around each of the letters at least twice to create a 'sketchy' feel.  Don't worry if you have a couple of wobbles as this all adds to the appeal of raw edge appliqué!

Place each appliquéd flag onto a triangle cut from your lining fabric, right sides together, and stitch the side seams leaving the top open.   Trim seam allowances and clip the bottom point to reduce bulk. 

Turn the flags right side out and use a chopstick or blunt stick to gently push out the points.  Press and then trim off the little 'ears' at the top of the flags creating a nice straight edge.

We now need to enclose the raw edges, the easiest method is to use pre-made purchased binding or even just fold some ribbon or canvas tape in half.

To apply bias-binding, open it out and stitch to the right side of your flags matching up the raw edges at the top.  Carry on sewing whilst placing your flags with an even spacing and leaving at least 10cm of tape at each end for hanging.  Then fold the binding over to the wrong side and catch into position with little hand-stitches, using the machined line as your guide.

This method ensures a neat finish on the right side of the flags with no visible stitching.

....and that's it!

If you can sew a straight line, you can sew adorable personalised bunting!

****

Finally, no blog post would be complete without

Lola, Luna, Digby and Orla