Craftaganza - Brighton

I will be at this event on Saturday 2nd March.  It's held in an old church and to be honest is worth a visit just to see the stained glass window!!!!  But I know that you will want to do more than that!  Some stall holders will be there for two days but many will be around for just one of the days - this is a great idea because it encourages more people to join in and it also means that people get to see more craft in a weekend by visiting on both days!

There are some fantastic stalls this time round check out the Craftaganza site here. I'll see you on Saturday and will be visiting on Sunday!!!

Use Your Stash

I will be launching a new range of needlepoint patterns at The Spring Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia II on stand E14 on 15th and 16th March.

The title of this collections is Use Your Stash and is a way of getting avid stitchers to use as much of their wool stash as possible.

Do you have a stash of wool's in your wool drawer (box, chest, room!!) that have languished there too long?  Maybe because they are not the right colour or you only have a small amount or that you just have not yet found a needlepoint pattern to use them on? 

Each design in the Use your Stash Range uses only 10 metres of each colour wool and can be shrunk or enlarged to fit the amounts of wool you have.

What was that?
How on earth will all my weird coloured wool's match together? 
Don't worry! You don't need to work for Pantone or Dulux to be able to stitch these patterns.  Each colour is used at least twice in each design which creates harmony to the eye.  

And who's to say which colours go together - by the end of your stitching your piece will have a unique colour combination,it will be bespoke and will have cost very little.  Oh yes and it will mean there is space in your wool stash for more gems!!

I will post a sneak peak in a week or so's time. Until then....

What's happened and what's coming up!

So it's been a year since I got in touch with Wendy Hope-Falkner of One Off Designs One Off Needle Work and asked her advice about getting my tapestry designs printed on to canvas to make kits.  Wendy gave me great advice and I now have quite a few kits for sale.

I have sold my kits at Spitalfields Market through Designer Makers www.designersmakers.com and We Make London www.wemakelondon.blogspot.co.uk, in Brighton at Craftaganza brightoncraftaganza.wordpress.com and am even in the process of getting my page up on Craft Central craftcentral.org.  So it's been a bit of a year!!!

On 1st March a large stitched piece by me (100cm by 70cm) will be on display in Brighton Library as part of 13 Women exhibition iloveartuk.com/shows/13-women-2013.  This is an international exhibition and I am very excited that stitch is part of the show alongside painting, printing and sculpture. If you are down Brighton way please go in and take a look it's always good to have expert opinion!  As with all of my bespoke stitching the piece will available as a print, the difference this makes to the stitch is interesting as you can see from the picture above which shows my Charley kit as a printed cushion.

Next on my list is to take a pop-up stand at Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia II on 15th and 16th March. Knitting and Stitching Show this is a new show and so they have introduced pop-up stands to encourage new designers and smaller concerns to get involved.  To say I am a bit scared is an understatement but it will be great for me to meet loads of stitchers and get to know what people really want to stitch.  I will be introducing the start of my new range called "Use your Stash" where patterns will take only 10m of any one colour so there's no excuse for left over wool to remain tangled in your work box! I will also be selling tapestry printed homewares so that tapestry needlepoint can begin to invade every room in your house!

So from one small email to a very kind woman to all of this, it's a bit silly isn't it!