I have just finished teaching at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. It was my second time there and I really loved it. The picture above is part of the Winners Wall.
My classes were great except that all my teaching materials got accidentally left in London and had to get shipped up to Birmingham and arrived 10 minutes before my first class. Luckily it was thread and fabric dyeing and two great stores at the show - Colourcraft and Empress Mills had everything I needed and kindly supplied it all so I knew I was going to be OK but it was really stressful. I was really impressed with both companies especially as they were family companies and I always love that. Check both of them out - you will be impressed too.
My most favourite aspects of the Show are the Galleries and the Virtual Studio.
The galleries are individual spaces for invited artists and the work is varied and astounding.
My friend Sophie Furbeyre does really interesting work with textiles and uses felt and sheers and lots of machine stitching to create beautiful textile pieces. I met Sophie when I was in Luxembourg and she is now a firm friend.
Another artist whose work I loved was Kate Dowty.
I loved her texture and colours.
C June Barnes and Janice Gunner had a joint gallery and the 3D nature of their work is amazing. This is the detail from some of June Barnes work
There is always a Gallery of Recent Textile Graduates and I was really taken with these small brooches or hairclips. They are about 3 inches across.
In my next post I will show some more quilts and the Virtual Studio which is where I spent a lot of time watching the creation of fabulous multi layered art cloth.
No comments:
Post a Comment