Craft Fair at Letheringsett

Lest you think I have abandoned textiles entirely for a life of music and frivolity, here are a few photographs of some of the items I've been working on for the Craft Fair at Letheringsett this weekend.

First the details - Back to the Garden can be found very easily on the main road from Fakenham to Holt, and all the details are on the website above. Come along for a visit, have coffee, a snack or lunch - and there is also a food festival on at the same time as the craft fair.

As well as the bangles and pin-cushions, brooches and quilts, I have some new items, some of which I am rushing to finish!

                                    A woollen bag with felted wool appliqué decoration.

A new cushion using some of my dyed blanket. I made the buttons with felted wool and pelmet vilene.

                  A fourth "One Bird Upon a Hill" cushion, they are proving to be very popular!

                                           Folk art blooms and birds on this third cushion.

I made this little nursery cushion using reproduction "flour sack" fabrics, and the central panel contains a dozen genuine vintage Suffolk Puffs or "yo-yo's" as they are known in the States.

        And this is my latest Angel Panel, slightly smaller than the first one which has sold. I so enjoy         designing and stitching these panels - more in the pipe-line, but not in time for the craft fair!

It will be an early start on Saturday morning, though it is less than an hour's drive for me. I'm quite looking forward to it, and bless her cotton socks, Yvonne Autie rag-rug maker and silversmith extraordinaire, has volunteered to come and keep me company all day Saturday. I know several other friends have promised to pop up and see us, and I hope that my Norfolk blogging friends might be free to dash across-county and come and say hello. This is a new venue for North Norfolk Arts and Crafts, and I am very proud that Textile Treasury has been selected as one of the exhibitors, so do come along and help make it a success!

Open Studios 2014

Welcome to Open Studios 2014. I do hope some of you will be able to pop in and visit us and have a look at the lovely things we've made. I am very fortunate to have been invited by my Stitch and Bitch friend Yvonne Autie to share Open Studio space with her at her home this year. Yvonne has done Open Studios for ten years or so and therefore is an 'old hand' - it has been really great for me to have someone who knows the ropes to lead the way through the application process and setting up.

It is a someone symbiotic relationship for us this year - Yvonne happy to have someone sharing the space as she hasn't had chance to produce her usual amount of silver jewellery or rag rugs, and I am so relieved to have someone do the organising as I have been totally consumed with seeing mum through her hip replacement operation, subsequent re-hab, and sadly through the awful, sad, and exhausting process of moving her into a residential care home. There are many things I haven't finished because I just had to stop 'making' while all this happened, but we think we have a pretty good display, bearing in mind this is Yvonne's home, not a white, studio space!

If you are local and have an Open Studios brochure, we are in the West Norfolk section at number 18. The address is   Derwent House, 24 Church Street, North Creake, Fakenham. NR21 9AD . Do come and see us! I shall be there Wednesday afternoon 28th May   Sunday 1st June all day  and Sunday  8th June all day. We are open 10am until 5pm.

You will see my patchwork quilts - this is called Technicolour Compass and is completely machine stitched and quilted. Some of Yvonne's rug-hooked cushions on the chair.

                                   Some of my - mainly wool and felt - cushions.

                                                 My colour wash cot quilts and throws.

      More quilts - the Birds and Baskets and Sunflower Farm quilts at the back on the window seat.

                                               A couple of vintage linen hangings.

      Yvonne in an article about rug making. She is wearing one of her fabulous collaged waistcoats.

        And here you can see just some of the beautiful sterling silver jewellery Yvonne makes.

So there we have it, I do hope some of you will make it up to see us, and I hope to have the chance to get out and see some other Open Studios too. If any of you have found this blog hoping to see something of my textile jaunt from this  Saturday, it is coming! Photographs as well, but I needed to get this post completed first and life is a little  complicated at the moment!