ON Being nominated for an award (or two!)

What does an award REALLY mean?
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You may have seen, or hear, that we've been nominated for a National Sewing Award for our Learn to Sew: Back to Basics course and more recently, Annie has also been nominated in a West Country Women Phoenix award.  This latter award is about identifying a person who has risen from the ashes of the pandemic and has worked hard to help change our lives, communities & economy for the better! 
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At Start to Stitch we are super excited about these nominations and over the moon that our online course and Annie have both been  acknowledged in this way.   But - these nominations also got us thinking about why such nominations and awards are important and what this  really means to us. 
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Many industries have some form of recognition or award scheme to acknowledge and celebrate outstanding work or contribution to the industry or business.   The Oscars and the Grammys, the Brit Awards and  TV Soap Awards ... to name just a few of the more well known ones. 

What does it really mean to be nominated for an award?
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To be told you have been nominated means that someone has taken the time and made the effort to complete the nomination process, this means that person has been inspired by you and what you do and wants to tell others about you. 

2022 has been a very busy time at Start to Stitch HQ, but being nominated for these awards made us look back and reflect on how far we have come and how proud we are of the work we have done.   Sometimes building a business, producing courses, marketing, social media, responding to queries, writing newsletters and all the other 101 things that are required can mean you lose sight of just what you have achieved, and these nominations have meant we have taken some time to actually consider this and recognise just how much Start to Stitch has grown, but above all how proud we are to have kept that personal, kind and friendly ethos that informs our business values. 

​To think that people have appreciated what we do enough to nominate us is actually very humbling. 

These nominations mean that the work we are doing at Start to Stitch is being recognised both regionally and nationally, and this makes us very proud of our work and our business.  It tells us that we have produced courses and created a sewing community that people are engaging with and learning from and most importantly want to be a part of. 

We often get feedback from members of Stitch Sewcial and students on our courses about how friendly and supportive we are, and how much they are inspired to learn more and progress their skills.  But -  we also hear from people who tell us their own very personal stories about the positive impact that being part of our sewing community, and learning to sew, has had on their lives and mental health.

Running Start to Stitch is about so much more than providing online sewing courses, our core values are about being kind and creating community, so when we receive feedback like this it really makes our hearts sing and our eyes leak a little. 
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Having taken time to reflect on what these nominations mean to us we have also realised that being nominated is another form of feedback, a very positive a public feedback, that will introduce others to what we do and help to spread the very positive benefits of sewing that are so much more than a needle and thread. 
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For us, this recognition means that we have been reminded about why we do what we do and our desire to continue to grow Start to Stitch and provide more inspirational and supportive content. 

​This is not a quick process, nor is it always an easy one; life, children, animals, sickness, etc etc can all get int the way of creating new content, especially when there is only Annie and Jackie (who is part time) working on Start to Stitch.  But being nominated for these awards means we are doing the right things and provides us with so much motivation to continue to develop and grow Start to Stitch.
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The people who have nominated us may well be reading this blog, and we would like to say thank you so much for believing in us and taking the time to do this.  We also want to thank our truly wonderful students and sewing community who continue to inspire us every day with their comments, questions, support for others and makes. 

​You are all all sew lovely and are without a doubt what makes running Start to Stitch so very special. 
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And finally If we were to win these awards it really would mean the world to us and enable us to take Start to Stitch to the next level.  So if you would like to vote for us we really would be so very grateful.  You can vote for us in the British Sewing Awards here.  You can find us under the EVENTS category, and then TOP WORKSHOP, then BACK TO BASICS - START TO STITCH ( this is where you put your tick please!!! ) The next round of the Phoenix Award is Judge led only! So keep everything crossed for us... 

AND if you haven't yet done one of our courses and want to find out what we're all about you can sign up to our FREE mini course for a take of what we do and how we do it.