Pin It Forward!

Today I've got a little post for you about one of my favourite things on the internet, Pinterest! They've just launched in the UK but I've been using the original version for a while. I'm sure many of you already use it (in fact I'm pretty sure I follow a fair few of you on there!) but for anyone who doesn't know what I'm on about Pinterest is basically an online tool for visually collating and organising inspiration and things you love.

People use Pinterest for all sorts of things; planning weddings or holidays, pulling together ideas for redecorating or cataloguing recipes. My favourite thing to use it for is planning sewing projects of course!

When you sign up you can set up different 'boards' to pin to. One of mine is a 'Sewing Ideas' board. On there I pin anything that inspires me for future projects. New patterns I like the look of, lovely versions of patterns that I see on your blogs, tutorials I want to refer to later, as well as images from all over the internet of RTW clothing I fancy recreating an aspect of.

There are a couple of easy ways to pin items. You cab either 'repin' other people's pins (This is how I got started and it's super addictive!) or you can pin pictures from anywhere on the internet. With so much inspiration surrounding us every day it's easy to feel like some brilliant ideas are passing us by so it's great to be able to pull them all together easily in one place to come back to later. 

I also have the Pinterest app on my phone which is great. Just like on the website you can browse different categories of pins, or search for something in particular. You can then start following other pinners so their pins come up in your feed; a bit like Twitter.

The best thing about Pinterest is once you've pinned an image whenever you click on that pin in future it opens the web page the original pinner got the image from. So I can whizz straight back to that tutorial I wanted to try or the web page where I can buy that perfect present.

It's like creating a personal visual reference library that you can call on for inspiration whenever you need. I love that it's a library of pictures rather than notes; a picture of a pattern envelope or of one of your beautiful inspiration garments is a much more useful reminder than a list of pattern numbers and titles.

I've also used specific boards to collect ideas for sewing challenges like Julia's Mad Men Challenge and The Great Gatsby Challenge, as well as pinning my sew-a-long garments to the By Hand London communal boards. It's also possible to make some boards 'secret' so your followers can't see what you're pinning to them. This is great for pinning things like gift ideas; I know my sister follows me on there so I can pin ideas for her to this board without having to worry that she will see them.

The list of uses goes on and on but I would love it if you followed me on there and we could make the pool of sewing inspiration even larger. Just click on the button towards the top of the bar to the right of this post to do so. If you don't have an account yet but would like to join an easy way to do so is to click right here!

This post forms part of the UK 'Pin It Forward' Campaign, launching the UK Pinterest. I'm delighted to introduce the next blogger in the campaign Sue Rawlinson from the sweetpea family blog. Sue has some great inspirational boards over on Pinterest and comes up with some brilliant crafty creations! You can follow her on Pinterest here!