Festival of Quilts 2014

Last week was the Festival of Quilts at the NEC and Maggie Grey/ d4daisy Books had a stand to promote the new book Cut, Shape, Stitch.  We were all there in force, aprons at the ready for some messy demos and had all gargled with TCP to get us ready for all the Talking.

And what a fantastic show it was.  I went over on Wednesday to help Maggie and Clive to set up and we had a great time seeing a lot of pieces from the book displayed in all their glory together.

Here is Maggie mentally preparing herself for the next few days ahead.  The stand did look fantastic though.

Those poles on the left have die cut flowers wrapped around them.  This is my favourite piece in the book.  I keep dropping hints to Maggie about how great it would look in my house, but she is determined to keep it.  Curses!

That was about as empty as it would be for the next few days so it was good to get some pictures of it before it all started.

We all took it in turns to do some demos.  Maggie did her wonderful Gesso and Quink Ink technique which drew in huge crowds and new fans.  That technique is covered in the book and Maggie has produced some amazing work with it.  Paula did a lot of metal cutting on the Sizzix and I did some cutting on the Sizzix using fabric and some snow paint stencilling.

Paula applied alcohol ink to metal and cut it on the Sizzix

Alcohol Inks on metal

I had printed onto hand-dyed fabric from Alter Ego (Jo Lovelock) using Sizzix cut stencils, then machine stitched into the fabric.  I cut squares and triangles and am going to make some 3D houses, slightly different to the ones that are featured in the book.

All our supplies to demo with.

Maggie's Gesso and Ink sample and my snow paint strips

More gesso.  Looks fantastic in the flesh but a great example of this technique is in the book.

Maggie in full flow and trying her hardest not to spray ink all over the front row of watchers....

Luckily, we did manage to get out and see some of the exhibitions and quilts and other wonderful pieces in the show.  I am going to do a proper write up in the September issue of WOW but these are some of the highlights!

Annette Morgan and Louise Batten - Indigo Two Step

Cas Holmes - detail of Sandshadows.  Part of the Art Textiles exhibition on Identity.  This was a fantastic exhibition with many of my favourite textile artists.

Rosie James - another piece from Art Textiles.  Her work is fabulous and I will be reviewing her new book in September Workshop on the Web which I loved.

Stephanie Redfern in Art Textiles.  Stephanie is one my favourite artists and I just love her work.

Goldfinch Triptych by Chloe Redfern (Stephanie's daughter).  I loved her pieces too.

Daisy May Collingridge - A Collection of Quilted Monsters and Bedtime Beasties.  This piece was beautifully quilted and in yellow, my current favourite colour.

Jo Lovelock's quilt in the Fine Art Quilt Masters exhibition.  I loved the combination of text and the pieced pattern.  This is a detail photograph.

Ineke van Unen detail from Course of Life.  Her work was amazingly colourful with beautifiul stitching and composition

Judith Gundwiler and Gabi Mett had an exhibition together.  This piece by Judith is called Transmigrations of Life and this is a detail picture.

This clock by Kate Crossley won the Quilt Creations prize and unsurprisingly.  It was exquisite.  A fully working clock that was stitched, embellished and had an inordinate amount of treasures and hidden secrets for the viewer to search out.

Ineke Berlyn's Red Kites was included in Linda Seward's exhibition to accompany her book on Art Quilts.  I loved this piece.

Louisa Peers Bushfire.  This is a detail of a long piece with one of my favourite subjects - trees.  The colours were fantastic.

Having managed to get away from the stand long enough to take around 500 pictures, it was hard work to narrow these down!

One of my highlights though had to have been the presence of Amy Butler at the show.  Having been my fabric design hero since I made my Rainy Days mac (you can see it on one of my earliest posts), I was suitably humbled to be able to talk to her and listen about her work (all of her designs are originally made on paper and later transferred over to computer technology).  She was a beautiful and calm presence at a time where I was feeling a little manic with stealing moments to look around the show.  I regretted that she wasn't there on Sunday when it started pouring, as I was running around in my lovely mac, slightly damp around the edges.  Although she probably has people telling her all the time about what clothes of hers they have made...

I had a fantastic time this year, made special by the fact that we talked to so many people who were interested in our book and the techniques we have used in it.  Seeing some amazing work, talking to lovely people, putting faces to names and meeting an idol made it a week to remember.

Cut, Shape, Stitch by Maggie Grey, Paula Watkins and Me!

I am very excited to report that the new D4Daisy book, Cut Shape Stitch is progressing at a rate of knots and is being prepared for its launch at the Festival of Quilts.

The book covers all forms of cutting, from simple hand-cutting, die-cutting through to amazing computer controlled cutting.  We have had a Scan N Cut on loan from Brother and it has been one of the most exciting things I have done recently.  There will be more coming on the blog soon, but I just wanted to make an announcement here.

Just one of the pieces that didn't make the final cut was this one, using hexagons from graduated dyed fabric and then overlaid with flourishes and swirls:

But there is plenty more to come soon!

Approaches to Stitch - Book Review

Approaches to Stitch

Published by D4Daisy Books Ltd 

www.d4daisy.com

ISBN 978-0-9574413-1-6

Price £16.00

I am really pleased to be able to review Approaches to Stitch, the new D4Daisy book focusing on six artists - Elizabeth Brimelow, Ro Bruhn, Ruth Lee, Sian Martin, Olga Norris and Beryl Taylor.

Olga Norris

Sian Martin

Edited by Maggie Grey and with Michael Wickes's beautiful photography, the book grew from innovation, something that Maggie Grey is so good at.  Maggie put the feelers out to followers of her blog, www.magstitch.blogspot.co.uk and on Facebook, asking for suggestions of artists for a new book.  From the many responses that came in, these were distilled down to six artists.  This is a fresh approach in terms of commissioning, and the results of this are seen in the book itself.  The selections were well made. Each artists stands on their own in terms of their techniques and approaches, but the look and feel of their work gels together with each other in the book as a whole.

Ro Bruhn

Elizabeth Brimelow

Each artists talks of their background and experiences in inspiring the art they make today, and then go on to talk about how they approach their work.  There are step by step instructions given for techniques such as sun printing (Ro Bruhn) and stencilling (Beryl Taylor) within each chapter, and these are useful for giving an insight into how some of the work is produced.  Particularly interesting is Elizabeth Brimelow's stages of producing her Peach, Pear, Plum quilt, which takes you through the whole process of creating this quilt. This worked more effectively for this particular artist, rather than taking you through one specific area, because the construction of the quilt as a whole was what made the piece so interesting.  Each artist is profiled in a way that best fits their work and this really makes the book work well.

Ruth Lee

Beryl Taylor

There is a great mix of work contained within the book, from Elizabeth Brimelow's varied approaches to quilts, the colours of Ro Bruhn's journals, Ruth Lee's beautifully crafted gloves, Sian Martin's amazing bottles using dimension, paper pulp and stitch, Olga Norris's beautiful figurative studies and Beryl Taylor's delicious mixed media techniques.  All beautifully shot, the book is a fantastic snapshot of the scale and variety of textile work being created at the current time.  And in the technological age, where blogs and social networking have us flicking from screen to screen, it is refreshing to have some great contemporary artists committed to the page and provide us with a book we can sit down and absorbed.  I loved it.

If you want some added extras, take a look at Maggie's blog www.magstitch.blogspot.co.uk where there are posts relating to the progress of the book, and also sneaky peeks of the work she is doing on the next D4Daisy book on Cutting.  I am working hard on my bits for that book too, so 2014 is looking exciting already.

Knitting and Stitching Show

Please excuse the hiatus in writing.  The world seemed to have moved too fast over the last few months and I am just gathering myself together before half term starts and I get lost again.

Last weekend saw a trip to Alexandra Palace in London for the Knitting and Stitching Show.  I had a great day, meeting up with Maggie Grey, Fiona and Lauren (from Workshop on the Web) and my lovely friend Paula Watkins.  It was incredibly busy and too packed out in places to be able to walk around and see some of the stands at leisure (much better at half past four, when my feet were starting to complain) but I think I managed to see a good proportion of the show.

I really enjoyed some of the exhibitions that were there this year.  Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn had a wonderful exhibition, Jan being inspired by fields and how different times of day and the year affected their appearance.  Jean Littlejohn's work came from the glimpses of times past as a result of renovations in her home and her fanastic works of distressed surfaces were a joy to behold.  The fantastic stitching had us bowing at the altar of Textile Royalty.

Jean Littlejohn - Reclaimed Victoriana

Hoar Frost Jan Beaney

Moving on from there, Ruth Issett and Bobby Britnell had a joint exhibition Equal on all 4 Sides.  I loved the contrast between the two here.  Bobby's work was based on a Ugandan game, and the bold colours and pattterns were striking (left).  Ruth Issett's work was a bonanza of colour, and having reviewed her new book A Passion for Colour in the September issue of Workshop on the Web, it was fantastic to see how bright and vivid her work is in the flesh (it was incredibly vibrant on the page).(right)

Also on show, and not covered in my WOW review was the work of Nicola Jarvis, The Embroidery of Nicola Jarvis and May Morris.  The daughter of Willliam Morris, May Morris was a designer and embroider in her own right, and ran the embroidery studio of Morris & Co.  Her work is held in galleries around the UK and it was these textile designs of May and her father that inspired Nicola Jarvis to create embroideries, drawings and paintings.

The birds featured in the work were beautifully painted and stitched and I loved how Nicola Jarvis incorporated the colours and patterns into each bird.

All above pictures Nicola Jarvis

A lot of great stalls were there and I bought some fantastic fabric from Alter Ego (www.handdyedfabric.co.uk)

I also bought a few thermofax screens, some seagull masks and some yarn for my sister.

But aside from the shopping opportunities, at the end of day, we met Stuart Hilliard from The Great British Sewing Bee.  I have to say that he was so delightful it was the perfect end to a great day.  We all chatted about the Sewing Bee and how lovely and British it was to have people all supporting each other and being competitive in a non-competitive way!  He was hand-stitching some lovely pieced fabric.  His life in textiles has taken off since the show and it is fantastic that someone so enthusiastic about their work has such a life-changing experience and embraces everything it has to offer.

Published in Stitch Magazine

Some great news - I have an article published in this months Stitch Magazine!  I have written an article on die-cutting and what you can create specifically with fabric.

Issue 81 Feb/March 2013

http://www.embroiderersguild.com/stitch/currentissue.html

It is a great issue this month, and has articles by the fabulous Maggie Grey, Kathleen Laurel Sage's interpretation of Angie Lewin prints, and some wonderful books by Frances Pickering.

My article looks at die-cutting (all done with my trusty Sizzix) and I have made a wall hanging and book cover