Announcing our NEW and Exclusive 10th Anniversary Fabric Print

I love any excuse to get excited about fabric so celebrating the 10th anniversary since I opened the doors of guthrie & ghani is no exception and I have some REALLY EXCITING news to share with you in this post!

Hear me chat about it in my latest youtube video below, or grab a cuppa and read on for all the juicy fabric details!

Since I officially opened the doors of g&g 10 years ago this April the business has grown, developed and changed so much! I feel more passionate than ever about inspiring and enabling our lovely customers to sew their own clothes, to get joy and personal reward from that, to feel like they can learn and achieve something and feel proud and look amazing in what they have made for themselves.

To celebrate this landmark for the business and to celebrate the success of you, our lovely customers, and how amazing you are for being on a dressmaking and sewing journey, I have collaborated with the very talented designer, Rachel Parker, to design and bring you a NEW, EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED EDITION beautiful fabric print.

The full fabric print will be revealed at a magical, immersive in-person birthday event at the shop (in Moseley, Birmingham) on Saturday 1st April as part of a gorgeous new g&g Sewing Society kit!

The idea - Bringing the print to life

Over the past few years I have collaborated with Rachel Parker to bring you the colourful ‘Chicacheetah’ print which we launched in 4 colour ways as part of kits in 2021 and 2022. I loved this print the moment I saw it and you really loved it too - it’s been one of our top selling kits we have done.

I love Rachel's design aesthetic with bright bold colours and following the success and popularity of the Chicacheetah print, I knew she was the right designer to bring together a colourful, special and meaningful print to life.

I have been working with Rachel for almost a year to design a brand new exclusive, never seen before print that is full of colour and the joy of spring that not only has personal meaning to me with the elements featured in it, but also draws on my experience of getting to know you all, what you like and what is popular in a fabric print to bring you something I know you are going to love!

I’ll be sharing more details about the design process over the coming weeks so stay tuned if you are curious about that part of it!

Details you need to know for the new fabric launch event

The official release of the fabric will be part of our birthday event on Saturday 1st April, here at the shop in Moseley, Birmingham. On party day we'll be open from 10am - 4pm and there's no need to book - just drop in whenever you can!

The fabric will be released as part of a special kit to make a gorgeous garment so the sewing society kit launch date for April will happen a little earlier than the normal first Wednesday of the month.

For those of you unable to make the event, the fabric and kit will launch online the following day, Sunday 2nd April, to newsletter subscribers. General release online will then be from Monday 3rd April.

I’m planning for the event itself to be a magical immersive visit to the shop where we really bring the new fabric to life. The team and I will be transforming our gorgeous window display and studio above the shop into a fabric wonderland where you can see the print in all its glory, browse lots of sample garments, feel the fabrics softness and hold it up in front of a mirror to help you pick your favorite colourway.

I’m really excited to be hosting a fun in person event again in the shop as it’s something that we used to do a lot of pre-pandemic.

Get ready for a real party atmosphere where you can enjoy cakes and drinks with us and meet and chat to other Sewing Society kit fans. We’d love to see you proudly wearing a handmade outfit, perhaps a past kit you have made. Come on your own or come with friends. It will be a lovely chance to talk and chat to like minded people who love fabric and sewing as much as you do.

Alongside the launch of the brand new fabric design, we will also be releasing new colourways of the popular ‘Chicacheetah’ print on a different base cloth (previously it was on a viscose fabric) and we will also have some other special, limited edition birthday items available to buy on the day so I really hope to see you there!

Discover the print in our online 'fabric print forage'

It’s become a little tradition that the new g&g sewing society kits released each month are a surprise until the actual day of release, so I won’t be sharing the fabric or the pattern we have chosen for the kit until the event day.

But to give you an exciting sneak peek I will be planting clues on social media and in our newsletters for the next 6 weeks.

These will be elements or part of the print and the story behind them and what they mean - a bit like foraging for plants and flower clues as to what will be featured in the fabric print.

You will see them building up and coming together each week but to see the full print unveil you’ll need to come along to the event or be ready for the online launch to newsletter subscribers on Sunday 2nd April.

I’ll also be updating this post with the new element that is released each week - so watch out for these colourful snippets coming soon!

Week One - Fabric Print Forage Clue

Herb Sophia

As the g&g team and family has grown over the past 10 years, so too has my own family! And as my daughters name is Sophia I wanted to make sure she was included and represented in the print. I just love the delicate hand painted stems of 'Sophia herb' plant and the tones and shade of the watercolour really pop against the base colours.

Week Two - Fabric Print Forage Clue

The 'Lauren' Peony

I love beautiful big peony flowers, so when I managed to find one that had my own name in it's name, I knew it had to be included as well. These beautiful blooms have so much intricate hand drawn detail in them.

Week Three - Fabric Print Forage Clue

Solomons Seal

I have this magical plant in my garden at home, and as my little boys name is Solomon I knew it would be the perfect way to get lots of lovely green foliage in the print and include him too!

Week Four - Fabric Print Forage Clue

The Harebell

I might have lived in Birmingham for over 14 years but I'm still a Scottish lass through and through! Having a flower to represent that part of me was really important and the way Rachel has coloured the pretty flowers with watercolour really make them look amazing.

Week Five - Fabric Print Forage Clue

The Bumble Bee

The humble bumble bee represents for me where my own sewing and dressmaking journey really took a turn and changed forever. I've been sewing since I was a child, but as I wanted to spend more time making and sewing things in my 20's as a distraction from a busy and stressful job, I really started to enjoy it again.

I was in the process of rethinking my career choice and what I wanted to do going forward when I saw an advert in a local Facebook group about a new TV show that was being piloted called 'The Great British Sewing Bee'. Following the same format of The Great British Bake Off, I thought I would apply and see if anyone else thought I was any good at sewing and could actually do anything with it. Long story short, I was accepted as a contestant on the show and managed to get to the final of the 4 episode pilot, finishing runner up.

Being on the show was an amazing experience, not just for the sewing part, but seeing how a TV show is made and meeting other amazing people who loved sewing just as much as I did. The biggest thing that I've taken away from it all is that you are capable of more than you ever thought you could if you just get on with it, try your best, be open to challenging yourself and making mistakes. There were challenges set on the show and garments I had to make that I had never made before, and I doubt that I would have ever tried making them, or trying so soon without being in that situation. Once I had sewn those garments, that sense of achievement and satisfaction was more than I could have ever imagined. I'm not professionally trained in sewing or dressmaking at all, I just love it, will try new things, experiment and enjoy every part of it. And now, that's what I want to give my customers! That confidence and push to just try, give it a go, make something new and get that same 'wow I made this' feeling that I get every time I wear clothes that I have made. If I can do it, so can you!

And all of that happened because of the Sewing Bee - so of course it had to be in my special fabric print too!

Week Six - Fabric Print Forage Clue

The Daisy

The story of how we came to decide the opening date of the shop all those years ago became a coincidence and led to a chain of events that really changed how the business got off the ground! I had been renovating the building the shop is in for over a year, we took it completely back to the bare skeleton bones of the building. Time seemed to be passing so quickly and it seemed like getting things to a stage where I could actually open the shop was so far off, but it had to happen! I sat down with a friend in the January, we looked at the calendar, worked out when Easter was, when the school holidays were, and what weekend would be good and somewhat realistic to aim towards. It was finalised to be the Saturday on the last weekend of April.

At this point I had already filmed the Sewing Bee show, but we had no idea when it was going to be aired, only that it would 'be in the Spring'. And let's face it when you live in the UK that could be any time! As I worked towards the deadline of the shop opening at the end of April I casually read in Mollie Makes magazine one day that a new show 'The Great British Sewing Bee' would be aired starting at the beginning of April. I couldn't believe it! I knew there was 4 episodes, I knew I got to the final as it had already been filmed......so that meant the final of the show would air on a Tuesday and my shop would open for the first time on the Saturday! Unbelievable! And the rest is history as they say!

So April really is a significant month for me and the shop, and that's why I wanted to choose the Daisy, as the birth flower for April, to represent it.

Over the past 6 weeks I have shared all these little snippets of beautiful flowers and blooms that feature in our new fabric print - but they are only part of the story! The full print design will be released the Saturday 1st April at our Birthday event and online on Sunday 2nd April. Then you'll be able to see if you can spot these snippets in the real print!