Valerie Huggins Quilts and Textiles: July 2013

Monday, 29 July 2013

Sunday, 21 July 2013

I am drawn again to the Fashion and Textile Museum in the long shadow of The Shard to see the exhibition celebrating its founder, Zandra Rhodes: Unseen.
http://ftmlondon.org/ftm-exhibitions/zandra-rhodes/

It is, I am amazed to find out, this museum's tenth anniversary. Amazing not only for the usual "Can it really be that long - where has all the time gone?" reason, but because it took me years and years to visit it and now I can't keep away.

Yes, I do visit other galleries, but the past two exhibitions have pandered to my passions for bright colour and exuberant decoration. (See my earlier blogs on Kaffe Fassett, http://valeriehuggins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/kaffe-and-camila-masters-of-dazzle.html and http://valeriehuggins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/kaffe-fassett-once-more-with-feeling.html)
As one of the labels says of Rhodes: "Print and pattern are within the DNA of the designer."

As so often, it is the unexpected that catches the eye. I was drawn to a much-larger-than-life mirror mosaic (I love mosaic, especially of the broken-china type, being a close relative of patchwork in mixing "found" patterns) by Rhodes's friend Andrew Logan, founder of the Alternative Miss World in the 1970s and a mixed media artist who proclaims himself to belong "to a unique school of English eccentrics" http://andrewlogan.com/. By happy accident, a pedestrian diversion on the way to the gallery from London Bridge takes you past his own "Surreal emporium for all". Although I take issue with the last two words, having seen the prices of his jewellery in the Fashion and Textile Museum shop that would seem to exclude the financially embarrassed. And so I did not enter. "I love it," I said to my friend as we peered through the window. "It's so tacky and kitsch. But all in the best possible taste."

Design from Zandra's sketchbook

Another highlight was Rhodes's sketchbooks - she sketches every day, apparently - and the use of some of the landscape pages, going back to the 1980s, recently printed on to plain mini-dresses.

And, just because I'm in the mood for mauves and pinks with a splash of yellow, here's another of my quilts in progress. Nowhere near the magic of Rhodes and Logan, but it keeps me happy.

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; 07518 885960

Thursday, 18 July 2013

Dotty over spots, plus the hard sell

Quilt in progress

I like to think that my love of spots predates Damien Hirst's. I still have a newspaper cutting in my "inspiration" files dating from the late 1980s that shows him in front of one of his now ubiquitous spot paintings - the first time I had come across him or his work - and I thought I recognised a kindred spirit.

So, like the avant-garde composer Erik Satie in the Radio 4 play this week, I claim that it was in fact me who started the trend and, like Debussy, Hirst simply followed in my wake. He probably owes me some money.

My kitchen shelves

Since then I've seen spots appear on everything from coffee mugs to Thames river boats and a spacecraft to Mars http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2522417.stm and I've amassed a collection of spotty china and, of course, spotty fabrics. A quilt is not a quilt without spots on it. I haven't checked, but I'm willing to bet that all the patterned quilts on my website www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk, apart from those in the Island Collection (into which I've smuggled a few subtle stripes instead), contain spotted - and indeed dotted - fabrics. There is a difference, apparently, spots being irregularly shaped and placed and polka dots regular in both, but let's not quibble here. And two quilts that I'm currently working on have, among all the florals and squiggles, a few discreet spots and dots.

Quilt in progress

Incidentally - or rather not incidentally but vitally - I have recently realised that my blog was set up to help SELL MY WORK. And I have not tried very hard to do that. So here's the hard sell: if you love spots like me, why not buy one of my throws or bedquilts? Or commission one with as many spots as you can take? And if you don't like spots, well I do plain ones too. Prices start at £345. Visit my website, www.valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk, contact me by phone (020 7515 0701; 07518 885960) or email (Valerie@valeriehugginsquilts.co.uk), or you can visit me at the Country Living Christmas Fair http://www.countrylivingfair.com/xmas/. And tell all your friends.

... A few minutes' pause while I indulge in a trawl through work done for my textile degree in which I explored my obsession - and looking back after several years I can acknowledge that it was an obsession - including a photograph of my husband's bare torso covered in Smarties. And no, I didn't eat them; they melted and he had to take a shower. However, that was more successful than when I covered my black cat in fluorescent stick-on spots: she fled through the cat flap into the house next door before I could take her photo. I may well post some other spot-related pictures at a later date. In the meantime, here's a photo from St Martin's, Isles of Scilly.

020 7515 0701 FREE end_of_the_skype_highlighting; 07518 885960

Thursday, 4 July 2013

Violet: the sweetest of colours

Bedquilt made from Collier Campbell fabric samples

My latest fabric purchase, a greyish mauve foxglove design by Philip Jacobs (see below), the designer of extravagantly coloured large florals, http://www.westminsterfabrics.com/pub/designers.jsp, suddenly reminds me of a piece of advice given by Susan Collier, the eldest of the two sisters who founded Collier Campbell, during a talk she gave several years before her sad death in 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/15/susan-collier-obituary. This was (I paraphrase): "If you're stuck for a colour that will work with all the other colours you are using, try parma violet.

Looking at pictures of the small sweets from my childhood - still, reassuringly, being manufactured - I can almost smell and taste them. But it is the grey-mauve colour that is the significant sense experience here. Because it is, indeed, a sweetie. Neither as sombre as grey nor as attention-seeking as mauve, it slips diffidently into a collection of more assertive colours, like a maiden great-aunt, to sooth the fevered brow with spring-like gentleness.

To check out the evidence behind this wisdom, I went to the quilt that is now on my bed - see top - and which I made from fabric samples of some the iconic Collier Campbell ranges. And there it is, among the azure, ice-cream pink, rose and poppy reds, buttercup, sand and emerald: several shades of parma violet.

I am not sure if I have ever consciously followed Susan Collier's advice, but I suspect it has crept into my work by stealth. Now I will try to keep a few petals in mind when that "missing link" proves elusive.