Do you remember craft shows? Those events like the Knitting and Stitching show where large groups would gather to pet and squish yarn, coo approvingly at each other’s Fair Isle jumpers and leave with enough fabric samples to make ten king sized quilts? Well, it seems they are back and almost at normal speed – so how was the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace 2021?
We’ve seen a lot of things on this blog. Bobbin lace, saori weaving, an infinite number of embroidered cards… but they’ve all had at least one thing in common – thread. It’s true that I enjoy far too many different crafts, and one of the joys of that is finding how they all feed into each other, but today we have something of a first, a craft that involves no thread!
First of all, thank you for your very lovely comments last week. I am very lucky to have such kind readers! I’m afraid I don’t have perhaps the prettiest of posts today, but it is on one of my favourite subjects, colour. One of the joys of playing with embroidery is not just playing with threads, textures and shapes but also playing with colours. Machine embroidery threads come in a really dazzling array of choices and I will say I have been building up quite the collection, but it’s still never really enough…
Well, I had rather hoped that my last post would mark a return to a regular schedule of blogging fun but it seems that was too optimistic. Normally, I find writing here very straightforward and a lot of fun as it’s the one place I just get to ‘write’ without worrying about briefs, absolute technical precision and everything everyone else has written on a topic in the last hundred years. Recently, though it feels like I’ve been suffering with a bit of ‘writer’s block’ which is very unusual!
lThank you all for your very lovely and thoughtful comments last week. Interesting as well to see how many of you also felt that you didn’t want to blog about the ‘thing we talk about all the time but don’t really want to discuss’. I’m afraid it’s not quite shiny things for this week’s outing, but is an adventure in digitising and the joy that are ESA fonts.
Ufffff… well, I guess I should start this post with an apology to both you and my neglected blog. Sadly I have not skipped off into some fibery sunset to develop new innovative chain plying methods, instead the reasons for my absence are rather more lame. Being the eternal optimist about time commitments, I had hoped that the last few weeks would just be standard levels of busy rather than ‘everything is on fire’ status.
I don’t remember how I stumbled upon the existing of the Japan House in Kensington, London, but I am very glad I did. Apparently it is supposed to be ‘presenting the very best of Japanese art, design, gastronomy, innovation, and technology’ to deepen our appreciation of what Japan has to offer. It’s a really interesting and honestly incredibly persuasive initiative from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially when they put on some incredible textile exhibitions which you can enjoy for free.
This is a great shot of how my coffee table currently looks. Beads, beads, beads, a marked-up temari, embroidery cases and the V&A’s latest magazine that I thoroughly blame for causing the bead situation in the first place. They have a Fabergé exhibition coming up soon and so had the most wonderful jewel-encrusted piece on the front cover which left my inner magpie hankering for shiny things…
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There’s nothing better when you embark on some new crafty journey then buying a good book. While they’re heavy, bulky and completely inconvenient when compared to digital files but I still vastly prefer paper and ink to their digital counterparts. I like it even more when said books prove to be excellent references that you come back to time and time again. When it comes to machine embroidery though, where is the best place to start?
If April is the cruellest month, then May is the month of utter madness when the weekends become extensions of the working week and thriving is renamed surviving… I am tired. Still, it has passed, many totally uncrafty things got done, but a few crafty ones snuck in there as well.
astitchornine 