Yesterday I was out of the house for 14 hours. I went to the Sewing for Pleasure show at the NEC - 3.5 hours travelling each way by train. I met my friend Esther, a keen needlewoman, who travelled from Lincoln and we had a lovely, inspirational day together.
There were two things that made the show worthwhile to me. The first was that Linda & Laura Kemshall were at the show, and I had the chance to look at Laura's sketchbooks in detail. Proper artists sketchbooks - exploring themes, different techniques, working up design ideas, imperfect and uncompleted pages, themes changing suddenly. So, so inspirational. Beautiful. The ticket price was repaid just seeing these sketchbooks.
The other item of interest was when we learned how to fit LED lights to textiles. There is a special little battery unit that you sew on to fabric using copper-lined thread, insert the battery and the LED lights up when the switch is engaged. Very interesting with all sorts of potential.
Esther had a bargain show, buying lots of novelty fabrics (carrot and asparagus prints for salsa dresses, bright frog fleece prints for childrens sweatshirts) and I had a subscription to Embroidery magazine plus a lovely thread goody bag. Neither of us were short of conversation, or suffered from rigor mortis of the tongue! It was lovely to see her again, after about 2 years since we worked together.
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