A very lovely giveaway

When I was offered the opportunity to give away a little package of SisBoom loveliness to you earlier this week I was most delighted. Partly because the actual things to be given away are fantastic, but also because it's all a product of the wonderful Jennifer Paganelli. Jennifer may not know it but she's down in my head as one of life's smile-inducing people after she once told me: 'I love the way you work it'. Americans reading this may not understand why this was so delightful, as I'm imagining that it's a phrase that is sprinkled around liberally throughout their day, but this isn't a phrase that pops up in England, because rather than sounding cool, our accents would just make this expression sound a little stilted and...uncool. It's the kind of phrase that perhaps inspired my now-husband, when he was an angsty young teenager stuck in suburbia at public school with a half-broken electric guitar for company, to pen a song entitled "You and I, we should have been American" (I think the 'you' bit of the title was referring to his fellow also too-cool-for-England school friend, Will). Twenty years on, miraculously, he has still not gained an accent that allows him to utter cool Americanisms, but I think he's now more than okay with that. But still, it means that when a real life American lovely tells you that they 'like the way you work it' you can spend your entire day feeling cool by association. Jennifer, your words have power!

Anyway, onto the giveaway (if it hasn't been retracted due to my weird ramblings). At the top of this post is the cover of Jennifer's new book, Girl's World. It's full of wearable, classic dress patterns for girls, all beautifully photographed with a sprinkling of SisBoom fabrics over many of the pages. And I love that this book isn't just for toddling girls: it has much-needed older-girl patterns in too, so it's been on my own Amazon wish-list since it first appeared on Amazon (it's not released until May 1st in the UK). But the giveaway, isn't just for a signed copy of the book, which would be wonderful on its own, but also if you win you'll also have access to an online one-hour video tutorial created with Jennifer by Rick-Rack (thread therapy for sewers) that will talk you through all aspects of making one of the dresses from the book. This means it would be perfect for a sewing beginner or someone new to dressmaking - with a video to access in your own time there will be no strokey-beard moments as you ponder what an instruction might really be trying to tell you to do. Not only that, but if you don't already have your own supply of fabrics to hand, you'll be given a discount code so that you can buy fabrics from Fabric.com with a whopping 25% off, as well as later getting the chance to speak to Jennifer herself in a live chat if you run into any sewing problems while making the dress.

To enter, just leave a comment saying hello (or if you're American please feel free to also say cool things that you know I'd sound ridiculous saying myself with my English accent). The giveaway is open internationally. I'll pick the winner in my own (fair and) random way and the prize will come to you directly from Jennifer and her team.

Florence x