More Festival Of Quilts 2009

At 'The Festival Of Quilts' and at the 'The Knitting and Stitch Show' at Alexander Palace, London one of the many highlights is always the 'Graduate Show Case'. I find it so exciting talking to the graduates, looking at their work. Pure bliss when workbooks are on display. I love other peoples work/sketch books. It is so intriguing to follow the process from initial idea to the finished product. The creative energy is just mind boggling.
At 'The Festival Of Quilts' I just loved Fiona Wilson's work. It was so light and airy. So delicate. Her layered, stitched and lightly distressed pieces were just beautiful. I bought one of her pieces. It just had to come home with me and I love it! If you go to her lovely blog Fiona Wilson you'll find a lot of info about her work and you'll see what I mean
While browsing the huge and very tempting vendor area I stopped for quite a while to listen to a demonstration by Textile Artist Brenda Boardman. She was giving a superb talk on how she uses heavy weight Lutrador in her beautiful free style machine embroidered work. Lutrador is one of the products that I have never really gotten around to play with, so this was perfect getting all this inspiration and learning about it's properties. I bought two long and quite unhandy rolls of the 'stuff' and was logging them around for most of the day. Not particular smart, but I didn't want to waste my precious time going back to the coach. You can see Brenda Boardman's work on her web site: Brenda Boardman

Festival Of Quilts, Birmingham 2009

Drop Box

Wow what a week last week. Tuesday was the wonderful day out at The Henry Moore Foundation with 'Fiberfusion'. Friday a superb day trip to The Festival Of Quilts, Birmingham with my other textile group 'Out Of The Fold'. Had the most fantastic day. A huge amount of quilts, exhibitions within the main exhibition, demonstrations, workshops and vendors galore. It is always so mind boggling and inspiring to attend these huge events. I usually do my home work and kind of know what exhibitions/artists I want to concentrate on while my brain is still fresh. On this occasion I didn't take a whole lot of photos. Only 12 to be precise. But one of the few ones, that I took was an art quilt that really caught my eye. After looking at for a while, I went to read who had judged it. I couldn't help smiling when I saw the judges name. It was a Danish lady called Lisbet Borggren. It didn't surprise me at all that another Dane would have spotted that as well! As I was too cheap to buy the festival program I didn't know who made the quilt. It wasn't until yesterday that I learned that the quilt was made by a Danish! Internet friend of mine Mai-Britt Axelsen. I'm so thrilled for her. As a matter of fact she won two prizes. First price in the miniature category with 'Little Thin Blue Line' (30x30 cm)(the photo above) and second price for her art quilt 'Another Thin Blue Line' (120 cm x 120 cm) WELL DONE. CONGRATULATIONS!!! On her lovely blog Linen and Silk you'll find much better photos of her prize winning quilts, so do take a look.

Fibrefusion at Henry Moore

Yesterday I spend the most wonderful day at the Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, Hertfordshire Henry Moore Foundation It was a day trip with the textile group Fiberfusion. Very recently I had the honor to be asked if I wanted to join this very advanced textile group. This was only my second time meeting with Fiberfusion Fiberfusion But what a day! What more can one ask for: Great company, fantastic weather, a superb pub lunch in one of these very old, timber framed English country pubs AND the most impressive sculptures placed in natural surroundings, with lots and lots of open space around them. The sculptures were allowed to express themselves, not being crowded by one another (or city scape's for that matter. Very powerful. Three of the sculptures were placed amongst grazing sheep. One was on its own little mound, but two of them were actually the field. Over the years the sheep had polished an area/ring around the sculptures in sheep height, giving that area a lighter golden colour. It was lovely. The Marquette room was very exciting. There it was possible to view some of Henry Moore's design inspirations and his first attempts creating mini sculptures, playing and familiarizing himself with the shapes. In this area of England (East Anglia)there is a lot of huge flint stones/blocks in the ground, and one of Henry Moores returning design source were these big lumps of organic shaped flint stone. I didn't know that. It was a beautiful day out.

Workshop and Cakes!

I've have (once again) not been blogging as much as I would have liked to. 'Real life' has been busy, so my 'Internet life' has been put a bit on the back burner. Having said that, I have missed blogging as it does focus my busy life for a brief moment. So what has taken my time? Well the last week in July I attended a 5 day summer school in free style machine embroidery, Tutor Pauline Verrinder. A superb time with 15 like minded creative souls and their sewing machines. I'll write more in detail abut that later. So much to tell......
The summer school was followed by a lovely warm and very sociable weekend with friends. Then I had to do my final preparations for teaching one of my textile groups. We all take turns in teaching and cake baking. I do more teaching than cake baking which is totally fine with me :-) Everything in moderation (kind of :-) but I do love all these home baked, traditional English cakes all baked from scratch that suddenly appears in the tiny kitchen of our village hall where we meet once a month. This one was a moist, sweet, tardy lemon drizzle... beautiful!!!! Such creativity!
I tell you about the workshop I taught in my next blog post. Gotta run, I'm of to make a cake.... :-)

Great blog: Etsy Technology Help

I love it when I come across great blogs! This blog:
Etsy Technology Help I really would like to share with you. If you have an Etsy shop and is, like me, a tad computer challenged, then I would highly suggest you take a good look. I promise you it will save you a lot of time :-)
A couple of days ago I saw the blog link posted by
MagnetGames the blog owner, in the Etsy Forum. I clicked over there and was for a long while totally absorbed in all the great tips. Some I had come across before in the Forum, but a lot was new to me. Since then I have been implementing some of the things that she suggests. Amongst others how to add an active link to your blog post that opens up in a new window (like when you click on 'Etsy Technology Help' above. How to add a Google custom search area, like the one you see in the left hand side column. There you can type a key word and it will search your blog for posts with that specific theme. Very handy. Another tip mentioned: In my shop I have now added active links to some of my descriptions like 'You might like this listing as well'. A great way to make it easier for customers to let them know whats in your shop.
I still have a list of things that I would like to add or tweak in regards to my blog and etsy shop over the coming days. It always makes me so happy with all the great people out there just wanting to share what they are great at. Thank you MagnetGames!

At the crack of dawn

Well it is amazing how much one can get done when getting up at the crack of dawn. Our old cat decided that she was tremendously hungry and was talking up a storm at 4.45 am. Being a light sleeper at the best of times, an early raiser and still jet lagged from our recent travels to the US, I decided to stay up and get some computer work done which is a great feeling. Even though I did manage to get some work done in the US, I'm still behind from where I would like to be. I'll get there in the end :-)
I have just listed two batches of my hand dyed embroidery thread/yarn on Etsy red/blueish thread and olive green/blue thread Some time ago I blogged about the dyeing process and the final result. Please take a look if you want to more info/pictures (March 14Th and 19Th 2009). Four more listings are ready to be posted on Etsy over the next couple of days. I like to spread similar listings, so that they are not just sitting there as a big group. I work in so many different styles and I like that to be reflected when people visit my shop. I was just thinking, that I wouldn't mind, if the light would be good for taking pictures today. It looks quite promising. Slightly overcast, but bright. I have so many items ready to be prepared for Etsy. I find it easier and more time efficient to do a good batch in one go instead of breaking it up in chunks.

A quick update

Just as life was starting to find it own rhythm and my blogging was sort of picking up every thing goes a bit pear shaped. I know I won't be spending much time in front of the computer for the next couple of weeks. My husband and I are leaving to go to the US shortly. We have managed to sell our lovely house in Virginia and will be heading over to put everything into storage. It is with mixed emotions as we loved the house, the area and all our wonderful friends, but since we were not moving back to the US anytime soon in the foreseeable future it didn't make sense to keep it. I will be keeping SewDanish open, but any orders will not be shipped until the 23 July when we are back in GB again. Have a lovely summer, stay safe and hopefully not too hot :-)

Oh, on a completely different note. NFL and Fantasy Football season is just around the corner, judged by my husband getting more and more jittery. If you or your friends are interested please check http://ffguidebook.com where you will find info about the 5 books that he has published on Fantasy Football, with '201 Fantasy Football Tips" being his latest publication. There is a clickable link in the right hand side of my blog under 'great blogs' if you want more information about his books.