Today I am sharing a recent project I stitched for the amazing Lisa Congdon. Lisa is an American artist, author, fabric designer and somebody I admire very much. Lisa has very kindly agreed to an interview which will be on this blog on Sunday (March 6th) so make sure you check back or sign up to Jenni Smith Sews on Bloglovin and don't miss it! There will be a fabric giveaway from Cloud 9 too. The textile picture I stitched shows Lisa's beloved dog Wilfredo, fast asleep beneath a quilt. It has now made its journey across the Atlantic from Ilkley to Portland Oregon and has been very well received, much to my joy. The story of how it...
Last week I had my first experience of a craft-based trade show. I took part in Stitches at the NEC in Birmingham, Europe's largest event of its kind. My textile art, quilts and clothes were displayed on the Aurifil stand, the most popular thread on the market for quilters. I used their products in all of my projects and had made work to showcase their different threads including Brillo (metallic), Lana (wool), Floss and other weights of Egyptian Mako cotton. My aim was to validate my idea to sell products featuring my designs, as well as other "Beautiful Tools for Creative People". As soon as I arrived I knew that the creative world is where I want to be. I...
The mini quilt pictured here is this year's Valentine, stitched on my Janome machine using Aurifil 50wt threads and my freemotion foot. It is my first experiment with text in textile art, and is a little wonky! I received a very inspiring book on the subject for Mother's Day last year, written by British textile artist Sara Impey, and I finally had the time to try it out. I have loved Sara's work since visiting the V and A's seminal exhibition on Quilts from 1700-2010 a few years back, so I was really happy when she allowed me to share her work Between the Lines later in this blog post. The declaration "I Love You More Than Sewing" is a big...
A few weeks ago I spent the day teaching Alex and Brad the basics of sewing. They spend their days surrounded by thread and creative people at Quilt Market and other International Shows, so they were keen to give it a try. Not wanting an easy challenge they chose to make a tie - a project considerably harder than it looks and which drove contestants on the Great British Sewing Bee to tears. They didn't cry. Here's a little video to watch….
Hello again, My last post talked about Aurifil products in some detail - in fact my friend Nicky kindly said I sounded like quite a nerd. However, my main reason for visiting Milan was to meet the team and find out more about the company and its history. Here I am going to share some snippets from my day. Aurifil CEO Elena Gregotti grew up surrounded by the sewing industry. In 1957 her father Angelo founded Studio Auriga, and the company started producing punched program. In their neighbouring factory she showed me a vintage multi needle embroidery machine similar to that purchased by her father in post-war Italy. In that period the designs were each individually punched into paper by a manually operated punch, and decorative patterns would...
