Erotic delights in Regent Street

And so to Liberty, that wonderful store that promises so much and sometimes delivers, the Aladdin's cave of Arts and Crafts treasures, ethnic artefacts and so terribly English Tana Lawn http://www.liberty.co.uk/fcp/categorylist/dept/fabrics_classics, offering erotic delights among the exotic.

Erotic? I suspect my love affair with Liberty began with Margaret Drabble's novel Jerusalem the Golden, read when I was in the sixth form, in which a girl from the provinces is dazzled by the possibilities of aesthetic London and begins an illicit liaison in the Regent Street store's basement bazaar of Indian and Chinese crafts.

But I was in search of other sensual pleasures today, in the fabric department, where I was looking for some muted grey designs for a quilts started as a result of my Jolly Good Rummage (see post of June 20) but for which I didn't have the necessary yardage (metreage?) .

Liberty is, it has to be said, now pandering to the tourist. But that does not mean it is stuck in the past. Some of my favourite Liberty fabrics are those I bought about three years ago designed by Grayson Perry, above. Pollution, transvestism, gravestones, burning cottages and bunnies on bicycles anyone? One of them was already earmarked for this quilt.

Liberty prints, like Kaffe Fassett designs, have to be used with care. But they can still pack a punch.

On the way home on the Tube, I was sorting through receipts. John  Lewis's simply stated "Fashion fabric". Liberty's said "Poppy and Honesty". For that alone, Liberty still gets my vote.

Visit my website at www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk
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Handmade textiles for stylish interiors, off the shelf or to commission

email: valerie@valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk; 020 7515 0701 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7515 0701 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting; 07518 885960

A purple patch

I have been dreaming in colour. And about colour. Tracey Emin was wearing the most vibrant red dress when she visited my studio. And then after I'd woken up and walked into the kitchen in the full glare of morning seeking coffee, my eyeballs were assailed by a row of new yellow dusters that had been washed and draped across the radiator rails. (I have a love-hate relationship with dusters. Why do they need to be such a ridiculous colour, which bleeds into the rest of the washing? But how glorious that the iconic fuzzy marigold yellow with red blanket stitching trumps modern practicality. I want to embroider flowers all over them.)

 

Having played with complementary yellow and purple during my Jolly Good Rummage (see 20 June), I rushed upstairs to grab a purple facecloth from the bathroom.  A pre-breakfast buzz without the caffeine.

Visit my website at www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk
....................................................................................
Handmade textiles for stylish interiors, off the shelf or to commission

email: valerie@valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk; 020 7515 0701 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7515 0701 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting; 07518 885960

 

A jolly good rummage

Having indulged myself by blogging about my fabric hoard, the only logical next step was to pull some of them off the shelves and have a jolly good rummage.


This was rummage No 1, centred around the bold purple lotus design and the yellow and magenta to its left - fabrics I bought at the same time, loving the unashamed complementary colours that almost vibrate in juxtaposition.

At the bottom right is one of my all-time favourite fabrics, an audacious cerise floral against acid yellow with unequivocal slashes of black. But perhaps it is the story I love almost as much: I bought it many years ago from a street market in Florence - not by the yard or the metre, but by the kilo!

Below: Out go the lotuses and in come more traditional, but just as purple pansies. But as always happens when I'm collecting fabrics to make a quilt, it is the very last one that creates the problems. There are only eight fabrics and I need nine. The small mauve spot is OK, but OK isn't good enough.

The mauve spot is replaced by a trusty Kaffe Fasset floral. But, oh dear, am I finally becoming a bit bored with this? I'm beginning to miss the lotus, and the excitement that it seemed to offer. I shall sleep on it.....


And in the meantime, there's rummage No 2. Having tried before to choose a muted, understated palette, I shall try again with the greys and soft browns that I promised myself - see post of February 28.

Well, the browns didn't last again. Probably because I've only got one brown, so what did I expect. The vintage-style print in the bottom left also gets pulled out time after time but is never used.


I apologise for the presence of my cat, who has wandered uninvited into this blog - which in my view is no place for a fluffy animal - and refuses to leave. But I may as well introduce you: this is Milhouse, who sits on fabrics, eats earplugs and bites. Say hello Milhouse, then run along like a good chap and do something useful like catch bluebottles.

The "vintage" fabric, true to form, doesn't fit in. But I love the red, pink and green accents. So another mini-rummage brings out two floral fabrics - very muted for me. But I've still only got eight designs....

And here's the missing ingredient, below. Taking off my new dip-dyed, pink and floral shirt last night, I realised it was the perfect design. Except that it's chiffon. And a shirt. And I like wearing it.

I have used cotton fabrics from clothes in my quilts before - and I'm happy to make up "memory quilts" for people from their children's or their own clothing - but I don't think I can beat a friend who chopped up an expensive Dolce & Gabbana scarf because it happened to be just right for her latest project.

PLEASE NOTE: I have added a button that will keep you informed by email when I post a new blog. Which will mean that I don't have to phone up everyone to let them know. Just fill in your email address and submit.
My website address is now also on a tab - please visit it if  you've not already done so, for details of quilts for sale plus how to commission one in your choice of colours and size.

Visit my website at www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk
....................................................................................
Handmade textiles for stylish interiors, off the shelf or to commission

email: valerie@valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk; 020 7515 0701 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7515 0701 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting; 07518 885960

Play's the thing

Oh, this is the bit I love. Like a kid in a sweetie shop whose mouth is watering just looking at the colours and shapes. 

 

After years of "collecting" - ie, greedily snapping up designs that I fell in love with at first sight - I have amassed a large array of fabrics. Amazingly, they often go together wonderfully, if rather unexpectedly.  Like discarded loves, some are destined to remain, with much guilt on my part, on the shelf. Some I know I will never use - they somehow just never look right, whatever combination I try - but I still delight in them. Others started out as a sort of duty buy, rather dull but worthy, but have proved their worth ten times over. Long since out of stock, they are guarded jealously.

 

But getting them all out, rummaging around, throwing them up in the air, introducing them to each other, plucking one out of the pile and bringing in another, is one of the main pleasures of quiltmaking. As the lovely Lynn Edwards OBE, quilt author and teacher, once said at the beginning of a workshop after each participant had spread out her selected fabrics: "Let's just stroke them all and then we can go home."

 

A year or so ago I realised that I had to get a grip and impose some sort of order. In came the box shelves. I found them not from grown-up, serious-minded companies such as Ikea and John Lewis - nothing in my price range was the right size or shape - but from Argos's  children's furniture range, as if to emphasise that what I'm doing is, essentially, playing. Brilliant value (there was a three-for-the-price-of-two offer at the time ) and they're still available.  

 

A happy day or two was spent sorting out the fabrics by colour (and yes, I still have plenty stuffed randomly into drawers and in boxes under my desk as well). Not an exact science by any means; after I've pulled them all out for a good rummage and tidied up again, they invariable end up in different, if perfectly valid, categories. Which again suggests further combinations...  What joy

Visit my website at www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk
....................................................................................
Handmade textiles for stylish interiors, off the shelf or to commission

email: valerie@valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk; 020 7515 0701 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7515 0701 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting; 07518 885960

Time to lie down in a darkened room

 

The Prism show is over for another year. My knees ache after hours standing up stewarding and my head aches after too many glasses of wine consumed when overcome by tiredness and brain-buzz.  But I'm sure that's as nothing to the exhaustion the organisers must be feeling. It was generally agreed by members and visitors that this was a vintage year, and I was delighted by how my piece was "hung" - infinitely better than my try-outs at home. (Does one hang a bed, or does that term only refer to pictures on the wall? But what other word to use? "Placed" is too banal, and "curated" doesn't have quite the same meaning. "Presented" perhaps? But you get my drift.)

My Wake Up Sleepyhead was the centrepiece in the small back gallery - often a bit of a mish-mash of works that don't fit elsewhere - the bed and pillowcases spot-lit against a window with half-closed blinds and with the main lights dimmed. On the walls were other works that interpreted the theme of Liminal: Crossing the Threshold  in studies of dusk and dawn, dreaming and awakening. Birds cheeped in a delightful soundscape accompanying Pauleen Cattle's Dusk I and II, left, and ethereal fibre-optic filaments changed colours in Kate Findlay's Threshold of Consciousness, below.
Adding to the shadowy starscape was Jennifer Hollingdale's  Moon Changes, below left, and Sun Changes.

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I chose the book to go by the side of the bed purely on its cover. The title, Dreaming, was clear and concise and the bands of blue went perfectly with the pillowcases. But I wish it to be known that I do not usually choose my reading matter in this way. In fact it is a fascinating book, exploring the brain chemistry of sleep rather than getting hung up on skyscrapers and tunnels. And last night I achieved my first "lucid dream", where the sleeping mind recognises that it is dreaming and is able to control the action. I went flying up to the ceiling by sheer willpower. Very exciting. Bugger Freud. (But perhaps that's exactly what he'd like us to say.) 

 

And now back to quilts...


Visit my website at www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk
....................................................................................
Handmade textiles for stylish interiors, off the shelf or to commission

email: valerie@valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk; 020 7515 0701 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 020 7515 0701 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting; 07518 885960