Ushaw, where I have my studio, has a very busy Christmas programme.
On Friday 29 November there was a launch of the Christmas Tree Festival and the Christmas Selling Exhibition. This year there are more than 100 trees. My contribution is a ‘Textiles Tree’. It stands in the fireplace of the Refectory at Ushaw. All the decorations involve textiles of some kind and the majority are stitched, with a mixture of hand and machine stitching.
The cover for the stand that you can see at the base is my ‘Christmas Tree Skirt’ – you can find the pattern here.
The Winter Selling Exhibition is being shown in the William Allen gallery at Ushaw.
The walls are hung with works by local artists. I have three pieces in the exhibition, one of them is this small wall-hanging, ‘Joy’.
For information about opening times for Ushaw, visit http://www.ushaw.org.uk
I wasn’t able to be at the Friday launch of the two events because this year, for the first time, I was teaching at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate.
I have been going to this show since I first did my City & Guilds in Embroidery and thoroughly enjoy the variety of fibre-based crafts that it offers, including embroidery, dressmaking, felt-making, lace-making, knitting, crochet, weaving, dyeing, macrame and more. On the display board of samples for the workshops in the ‘Learning Curve’ you can get some idea of the variety of classes on offer.
I taught a workshop to make a ‘Quirky Bird’ panel (seen in the centre of the photo above) on Friday morning from 8.30-10.30 and on Sunday afternoon from 1.00-3.00. I bought some lovely French printed fabric last time I was away on holiday, which I shared with the participants.
The workshops are taught in partitioned areas like the one below.
A wonderful feature of the workshop programme is the provision of a ‘Class Angel’ who helps with set up, for example threading the machines and set down before the next class. I was very appreciative of my two Angels!
More about the Knitting and Stitching show in next week’s post…
Thank you for reading my blog. Quilt patterns are here, Fabrics are here, Classes are here.
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