Marching on to May!!!!

Well, well, well!!!  The sun has got his hat today - it's crazy how differently the sun makes the world look.  It's firing me up to continue with my current projects and look forward to May.

The month of May sees the month long Brighton Festival hit the streets, parks and galleries of Brighton.  One of the most interesting parts of the festival is Artists Open House, over the four weekends in May Artists open their houses and studios to exhibit their work.  Last year my small exhibition in my very small front room attracted over 700 people!! 
This year I will be exhibiting my work in JAG Gallery, Madeira Drive which is part of the Kemp Town Trail.  It is a small exhibition called Resonance and is also part of Craft and Design Month. 

I will be at JAG Gallery for every weekend in May with the exception of the 18th and 19th of May as from 15th to 19th May I will be in Clerkenwell at Craft central for Made in Clerkenwell. I will be launching two new printed kits at Clerkenwell here is a sneak peak!!

They are based on my drawings and photographs of jellyfish that got washed up on a Scottish beach a few years ago.  I still have to stitch them to ensure the colours and details work so they may change a little before Made in Clerkenwell.

Happy Stitching!!!!

A week to reflect!!

Well this has been a bit of a week for me all in all.  The Knitting and Stitching show went really well, it was great to meet many like minded people and talk about stitch.  I had a great if tiring time, I was so lucky because my stand was opposite two people whose work I have admired for many years the lovely Gilda Baron and the equally beautiful Eliza McClelland.  Both of these women were so helpful to me and gave me loads of advice and happy smiles when I felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of people that came to the show.

            An example of Elizas work

            An example of Gildas work

                 My pop-up stand!!!!!

After being at Olympia for the Friday and Saturday, Sunday morning saw me taking down my large stitched piece from the 13 Women show in Brighton, it's great to have this piece back safe and sound.

This piece (A Woman's Weave) will form the basis for my solo show Resonance which will be on display at JAG Gallery, Brighton during May for National Craft and Design Month.

I am very excited to be exhibiting at Craft Central from 15th May as part of Made in Clerkenwell, I will have some new kit designs and will also have extended my "Use your Stash" range.

Finally (!) I have been accepted to exhibit at Fusion a weekend event at West Dean College in Chichester in June, this place is the home of Tapestry and so it will be great for me to display my work there and also sell some kits!

Quite a couple of weeks!  Off to update my website now!!!

Spring Knitting and Stitching Show - here I come!

So here I am getting ready for The Spring Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia.  It's really exciting for me as I did not think I would be doing a show like this for another year or so but the opportunity to have a pop up stand for two days was too good to miss.
I will be there on 15th and 16th March on Stand E14, alongside my  tapestry kits I will be launching a new range of pattern charts that use only 10 metres of each wool colour.  They are simple designs and include the design that I use to create my bespoke stitching.  The range is called Use Your Stash and I hope it really encourages people to use up the odd wool they have hanging around. I hope to add printed designs to the range later in the year, I'm working on them after Olympia.
So if you are coming to Olympia please pop by and say hello, it will be great to meet you and talk about tapestry needlepoint until the cows come home!

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!

Latest Commission

It's always nice to work on a commission for a family member.  Now I am from quite a large family so I'll just say my cousin has recently finished her nursing degree and is taking up her first post in March.  She has worked for the NHS for many years and decided to change tack and become a nurse.  Well done her!!!

She met many wonderful people on her course and one friend in particular.  She asked me to design and stitch a piece of tapestry for this friend that included the quote "to unpathed waters, undreamed shores" it's from A Winters Tale.

Here is my design, I wanted to put something into it that represented the nursing community that she and her friend are now joining.  I looked up nursing symbols and chose the one that has two serpents and wings, this is an international symbol so in order to bring it back home I added a small yellow light to represent Florence Nightingales lamp.

Nurse Symbol

Tapestry Design

The stitched piece will be perfect to make into a lumbar cushion for a hard working nurse to rest on when she finishes her shift or will be framed, it's up to my cousin to decide after all she is the customer!!!

It's a really simple design but it means so much - I am currently stitching it up and maybe, just maybe I'll stitch a secret one for my cousin as well  but probably in cross stitch for framing.

Happy Stitching!!