As Amanda Jane Textiles is a small business, I am a member of the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses), for the many benefits membership brings me. In fact, there have been un-looked-for benefits in addition, as you will see. Earlier this year the FSB teamed up with Mail Metro Media to offer free publicity to small businesses in the UK during the corona virus lockdown. In total, £5,000,000 of advertising is being given away.
Six thousand small businesses applied for this scheme and mine was one of the 1,500 who benefited. Last week was my week. It began with a small ad, along with 49 others, in The Sunday Mail:
Amanda Jane Textiles is on the right-hand page, bottom row, second from the left. This is the ad:
This advert appeared in The Metro on Wednesday.
And on Friday, the small ad was back on a page of the i newspaper.
As you can see, a wide variety of of businesses were represented!
If if you are here because you have spotted an ad, hello and welcome.
In other news, the Festival of Quilts (normally held at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham) took place online this week. This quilt was entered in the ‘Group Quilts’ category:
The quilt was made by a group of three, my friend Felicity Higginson, my friend Alison Moore – and me. This is the description of the quilt, given in the entry and written by Alison:
Three friends holidaying together and talking about how to grow old happily. It leads to a three way group quilt – triangle based, of course! A different colour chosen each week for 10 weeks, triangles cut and posted, hexagons assembled, lay-out agreed, words of wisdom embroidered, top assembled in Cambridge, layered in Ushaw Moor and quilted in New Brancepeth.
Alison and I have made quilts together before. You can read about the first one (called ‘To and Fro’) here and the second one (called ‘Green Thoughts’) here. When we made the first one, we were asked ‘But who will keep the quilt?’. This difficulty was solved by making a second one. As for the third, it clearly belongs to Felicity, who introduced us in the first place!
This quilt was made by me and entered in the ‘Pictorial’ category.
This is the artist’s statement from the entry:
The silk painting was based on an original life-drawing sketch in pencil. The life model looked both relaxed and pensive in her pose so I used free-flowing lines drawn with gutta (before the silk paint was added) to suggest flowing thoughts. These were then embellished, for who knows what she was thinking…
You can find out more about these two quilts and see the other quilts in this year’s competition with this link: https://www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/beyond-foq-quilt-competitions/
So… a slightly longer blog post today, but, then it has been quite a week.
Thank you for reading my blog. Quilt patterns are here, Fabrics are here, Classes are here.
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