Marian Jazmik & the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award at the Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate 2019

Marian Jazmik - Gravel Path (2 vessels), Lichen 1 & Lichen 2

This is the third in my series of blogs about the 2019 Knitting & Stitching Show at Harrogate.  Marian Jazmik's exhibition - Beyond the Surface - was fascinating. Marian takes photographs on her walks on the Lancashire moors and on her travels abroad and digitally manipulates these to reveal hidden surface textures at micro and macro scales.  Fungi and lichen are of particular interest to her. Using mixed media including plastics, packaging, wood, wire and papers and using free machine embroidery & the application of heat Marian produces these amazing surface textures...

Marian Jazmik - Beyond the Surface

Marian Jazmik - Beyond the Surface

I was also blown away by the exhibits in the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award.  Here are just some of the fanastic entries including one by Suzette Smart who is inspired by her local landscape, birds, animals and storytelling and using collaged fabric, machine embroidery and hand stitch...

Suzette Smart - Draw my world in words

Amans Eliane stitched letters to someone close to her, who was undergoing cancer treatment, on torn bedsheets .  These letters were never sent but knitted up - the knitting itself indicative of the time passing during this difficult period...

Amans Eliane - A toi, Lettres secrete

Ann Goddard's piece highlights the decline in the global insect population and the threat this poses to the health of the planet.  Her chrysalises, some of which have been burnt, have been formed from Ugandan bark cloth...

Ann Goddard - On the Brink

Caroline Bartlett uses cloth to embody memory, identity and experiences, folding backwards and forwards on itself as a metaphor for the degenerative and regenerative processes of life...

Caroline Bartlett - Imprint II

Using ideas from mathematics, Marilyn Rathbone has created an artwork that determines itself from the structure she has chosen, represented by dorset buttons and joined by bugle beads...

Marilyn Rathbone - Self Avoiding Walk

Susan Sami celebrates the past story and the beauty of the gradual decay of Brighton's burnt West Pier Marina using printing techniques and machine embroidery...

Susan Sami - Up in Smoke

Gaining creative inspiration and materials from her allotment, Alice Fox has produced some vessels formed round apples using stitched looping.  The apples dried and shrank leaving the vessel shapes...

Alice Fox - Apple Vessels 1-5

Hope you've enjoyed looking at at this brief selection of amazing textile art.

The Embroiderers' Guild & the Quilters' Guild at the Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate 2019

Home Exhibition - Catherine Hill - My Mum's Baking - Cheese & Onion Pie

The Knitting & Stitching Show provided an opportunity to have a closer look at work by members of the Embroiderers' Guild and Quilters' Guild.  The Embroiderers' Guild had an exhibition entitled "Home" where their members had produced work about what "Home" meant to them.  Here are some of my favourites...

Home Exhibition

Clockwise from top left: Frances Reilly - The Cotswolds, Moira Wood - It's Where the Heart Is,  Victoria Flood - Symbols of Home, Sara Frost - Washing on the Line

Home Exhibition - Anne Kelly - Maudie's House

They also had an exhibition of "Life's Rich Pattern"...

Pauline Medinger - Pine Deconstruction

Pam Keeling - Patterns of Autumn

Jean Usher - ...two days after Pearl Harbour

And of course there was the Graduate Showcase.  There was some amazing work on show including...

Elle Foreman takes the discarded and transforms it into something unique using among other techniques, printing, stitching and applique...

Elle Foreman

Catriona Charlton's work centres on costume inspired by the teen fantasy novel Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor...

Catriona Charlton

Alex Vincent Turner's work is influenced by issues of sustainability and male identity and the need to embrace the feminine side of menswear...

Alex Vincent Turner

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Quilters' Guild and as ever they had some amazing quilts on display including...

Katarzyna Plesniak - Pieces of Memories 1

Katarzyna Plesniak - Pieces of Memories 1 (detail)

Jean Grimshaw - Berlin Wall

Heather Chalkley

CQ London were also exhibiting at the Knitting & Stitching Show.  They are a London based group of contemporay quilters and their theme was "Capital Contrasts" focussing on their home city. I particularly liked this one...

Sabi Westoby - Southbank 14 CQ Quilters

With so much to see, I can only give you a brief taster of all the wonderful work on show. If you missed the 2019 show, I'd recommend it as an essential date for your diary in 2020!

Denise Watts & Kate Whitehead at the Knitting & Stitching Show - Harrogate 2019

Denise Watts - Dressed to Impress

"Fashion can be bought, style must be posssessed." Edna Woolman Chase

I particularly enjoyed the Knitting & Stitching Show at Harrogate this year.  I'm not sure whether it was the fantastic exhibitions, the great workshops, the enticing stalls or the fact that I'd finished my own pre-Christmas events. In fact it was probably all those things.  

Denise Watts - Everything is Rosie

"Be content to stand in the light and let the shadow fall where it will." Mary W Stewart

Anyway this blogpost is about some of those fantastic exhibitions.  I really loved Denise Watts' "The Little Woman" exhibition.  Denise Watts is a bobbin lace artist who through the medium of art dolls, has expressed women's pain throughout history, be it menstruation, childbirth, heartbreak, beauty treatments, having a conforming body shape, being treated as a chattel, or the general frustration of not being treated equally to men.

Denise Watts - Trapped in a Bubble

"Menstrual blood is the only source of blood that is not traumatically induced.  Yet in modern society, this is the most hidden blood, the one so rarely spoken of and almost never seen, except privately by women..." Judy Grahn

The dolls were beautifully made with paper mache heads, arms and legs, fabric bodies and hair made of handmade horsehair bobbin lace.  They were dressed in vintage fabric and lace.  Each doll was also accompanied by an appropriate quote.  You can see some of my favourites in this blogpost.

Denise Watts - She Wanted Curls

"Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't let anyone ever tell you different."  Mary Ann Shaffer

Kate Whitehead is a textile artist, whose work is a protest against the way textiles are consumed in western society. Through weaving and embroidery, Kate explores the potential of the forgotten, the overlooked and the abandoned. Kate was showing work from her series "Honesty is the best policy" - in honour of her father's life & "Not from the stork".  Kate is an adoptee and in her work "Not from the stork" she explores the journey women make to have a baby and to nuture it in the first weeks of life and to celebrate her mother and father for adopting her and others who adopt and foster.

Kate Whitehead - Honesty is the best policy

Kate Whitehead - Honesty is the best policy

Kate Whitehead - Honesty is the best policy

Kate Whitehead - Not from the stork - Mother & Daughter

Kate Whithead - Not from the stork - Mother

Kate Whitehead - Not from the stork - Daughter

More to come about the Knitting & Stitching Show in the next blogpost!

Mini Pincushions for the Travelling Stitcher

Mini Pincushions for the Travelling Stitcher

Recently, I had a great find at my local charity shop.  I found a couple of wide hexagonal rings that I thought would make great mini pincushions...

Rings from the local charity shop

I used some FIMO to make bottoms for the rings using the rings as cutters to get the right shape...

FIMO bases

Next I glued the bottoms into the rings - I used UHU glue...

FIMO bases glued into the rings

Then I cut out a circular fabric top using a template.  I wasn't sure whether this would be the right size so I made one in calico to check and it was fine.  Using a running stitch round the fabric circumference I gathered the fabric and stuffed it...

Cardboard template for the fabric top and samples

Here are the finished ones I made using Liberty prints...

Liberty print pincushion tops

I glued these into my pincushion bases. And here are the finished pincushions, all ready for the travelling stitcher...

Mini pinshions ready to use

As not everyone will be able to find some suitable rings or have some FIMO lying around I've written some instructions so you can make your own mini pincushions using bottle tops...

Mini bottle top pincushions

Check out the instructions here or take a look on my How to make... page.

Happy stitching and happy travelling with your mini pincushion!

York Makers Winter Fair - Saturday 9 November 2019

I'm only doing one fair this winter and it is the York Makers Winter Fair on the Saturday 9 November 2019 from 10:00 to 15:30 at Clements Hall, York.  I'm really looking forward to it.  If you'd like a sneaky peak at some of the items I will have with me take a look.  There'll be some ceramic bird button brooches...

Ceramic Bird Button Brooches

and some anodised aluminium button brooches...

Anodised Aluminium Button Brooches

Check out the knitted tree brooches in a variety of sizes...

Tree Brooches

and the wooden domino brooches...

Wooden Domino Brooches

and, of course, there'll be a large selection of Liberty print fabric necklaces...
 

Liberty Print Fabric Necklaces

and some Christmas cards involving a bit of upcycling...

and lots more!


There'll also be lots of handmade loveliness from other stallholders:

Art, Prints & Cards:
Art in the Attic
Lin Taylor Art 
Lucy Monkman Illustration
Marco Looks 
 

Art, Prints & Cards

Candles: 
PQ Soy Wax Candles 

Ceramics: 
Andrea Cundell 
Catherine Boyne-Whitelegg
Here be Monsteras 

Candles & Ceramics

Food: 
Deborah Bakes 

Glass: 
Naomi's Stained Glass 

Jewellery: 
Jo Bagshaw Jewellery Designer and Maker
Judy's Jewels 
Loups 
Richard Whitelegg 

Jewellery

Papercrafts: 
Turn the Page Design 

Cakes, Glass, Papercraft & Wood

Textiles, Clothes & Vintage Haberdashery: 
Blossom By Helen 
Greenhart and Kind 
Petra Bradley Prints 
What's to be Done With Her
Wonderful Weaselworks

Textiles, Clothes & Vintage Haberdashery

Wood: 
Greenhart and Kind 
Woodwyrm


If you want to know more about any of the artists & makers, you can find them all on Facebook or check out the York Makers page - where until 6pm on Monday 4 November you've a chance to win a £25 voucher to spend at the fair! 


Hope to see you at the York Makers Winter Fair!