EXOTICA

I went to the class at Bournville yesterday, more Bondaweb and stitching. I am not going to show my trivial attempts. Apart from putting the sewing machine needle through my finger, I worked hard.

On the way home I visited EXOTICA, the Midlands Textile Forum's show at Birmingham Botanic Gardens. They have a nice gallery which is a throughway so lots of people pass by and stop to comment

'Oh look, it's all stitched'
'This one says it's made of felt'
'Look at those nice flowers'
'I do like that, it looks just like the greenhouse'

The 'art' pieces were passed by. It was 'pictures' they liked.

I thought the exhibition was good, one of the best I have seen from MTF and I think the reason was that the exhibition had a theme which was the Botanical Gardens. Also everything had to be hung and a size limit of 50 by 50 cms was put on entries. The result is that the hanging looked uniform. Everything was framed - except for mine which I thought were poor and that was my fault. I put a dowel through the top and weighted the bottom with lead weights for curtains. The hanging wire was visible at the top (which it was not for anyone else). The pieces were 50 by 50 cm so picture framing them would have made them too large. A better method would have been to have made a stout wooden frame to exactly the size of the weaving, mount the weaving on a larger piece of dyed calico and staple the calico to the  back of the frame. The other thing that was obvious was that the selvedges of the birds was wiggly. Clearly the use of quite different yarns in the weft pulled in one of the sections. Moral:- use the same type of yarn throughout as weft. I should have hung up the pieces at home for a week to check these flaws.

When I got home, I realised that I was not going to get the piece of needle out of my finger so went round to the local Minor Injuries Unit, where they insisted on X-raying it. It took about 20 seconds to remove it and the nurse insisted I take it home with me - 'It's your property'!!  After all that I spent the rest of the day doing not much. I must be more energetic today.