March and April seem to have passed by in an absolute blur for me and I’m loving the Spring weather that is starting to show its face now. Looking forward to more sunny days ahead filled with stitching.
In very exciting news I was the winner of the Viewer’s Choice award at the Broderer’s Exhibition! Thank you so much to everybody who voted for me, it is such an honour to have people enjoy my work and think it worth voting for. My prize was a box of beautiful thread from Devere Yarns, who were the sponsor for the exhibition. I will also get a mention in the article about the exhibition by Embroidery magazine, coming out soon. I’m looking forward to seeing my name in print!
The major event for me in March was taking part in an exhibition with a group of fellow Morley College alumni. We decided to team up and use the wonderful gallery that is part of the college to showcase our current work and show how far we have come since joining the college. Four of us were from the textile foundation course and one from the fine art side, but the collection of work we produced between us was very mixed media.
I produced some new work especially for the show under the theme of ‘Sweet Treats’. Jumping off the back of the cake and also the Battenberg I had previously made I created a further five pieces, all inspired by bakery items; a doughnut, a Swiss roll, a cookie, a stroopwafel, and a cinnamon swirl.
In addition I also exhibited some pieces that I had made previously but had never displayed before; the avocado, and the four small fruits that I made last summer, banana, cherries, lime, and strawberry.
At the same time as this exhibition, I also entered a new piece of work in the National Embroidery Awards, which was displayed at the Creative Craft Show at the Birmingham NEC. Sadly there were no prizes for me at this show, but it was great to have my work hung alongside some other fantastic pieces. For the awards I had to create a new piece that wasn’t allowed to be shown on social media before the show, which I found very difficult! The piece I made was a pepperoni pizza. It was quite a challenging piece of work for me as it was quite a big project but I also wanted to have a slice coming out of the pizza as a self-supporting 3D element. This was really fun to make! I achieved the effect of the floating slice using a wire frame and hid the legs of the frame amongst the stringy cheese pulling out of the rest of the pizza. It may not have won any prizes but its gone to the top of my favourite pieces!
April has mainly been taken up with a nice relaxing holiday and Easter festivities, but I currently have another piece of work on display. In Rochester, Kent my doughnut is taking part in the Taste exhibition in the Halpern Pop gallery. I dropped it off last week and am planning to visit the exhibition next week. It’s on until 5th May so if you are in the area pop into Café Nucleus and find the gallery out the back.
