I’ve just had the great news that I’ve been selected to exhibit at Maison & Objet, next January, in L’Espace!

This is a huge honour for me and five other members of Design Factory,  as we are being sponsored by Ateliers d’Art de France, the French equivalent of the Crafts Council and UKTI.

Maison & Objet takes place at Parc des Espositions, Paris-Nord, from 22 – 26 January 2010.

My work has been reviewed by Design Week on their new Interiors Talk website. You can find the review here: http://www.interiorstalk.com/news/als/als100.html

What a fantastic show, more cutting edge design, less corporate stands, some great new designers!  There was a real buzz about the place, so I feel really privileged to have been there.

I was really pleased with my stand and had some great comments about it, which made all the drama and hard work of putting the collection together well worth the effort.

Here are just a few images of my stand.

There was a post on the Textile Designers Group of LinkedIn recently asking whether designers are influenced by art and artist which got me thinking.

I love art and, in particular, brightly coloured pieces!  I met an artist at Banks Mill Studio’s last year, Deborah Allitt, who’s work is really beautiful, big, bright, bold and colourful.  She uses texture in her work, too, which was also a big draw for me and she’s allowed me to use one of her pieces as inspiration for a new collection, which I’ll be working on after 100% Design.

So, in the LinkedIn post, apparently, some design studio’s don’t allow their designers out into the Art Galleries to be inspired by art during their working week, even for an afternoon during an “Art Week”, for example.  But, to me, that isn’t necessary, you can be influenced by art in all manner of ways, for example, on my iGoogle page I have several “Art of the Day” widgets which I find very inspiring, today’s Van Gogh piece was “A Young Scheveningen Women Knitting” which I’ve never seen and is really beautiful, soft greys and blues, sensitively painted.  It would be great to use as a collection, as one of the current trends for A/W 2011 is dark inky blues!

Hi,
for various reasons I couldn’t work yesterday, so find myself at my desk and loom today! Not a hardship for me, but I came across this link to some very useful advice:
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/08/14/things-to-do-on-friday-to-make-monday-manageable/

Although I try do my accounts and other admin. jobs as I go along I often find that a Friday is when is when this work gets done!

The advise the blog give is so useful, particularly the last point, keeping your clients informed.

When working to a deadline it is so easy to get absorbed in the work, whether weaving, graphics, web design or any other, that a little time out to let your client know that all is in hand and at what stage you are at can be forgotten,.  This isn’t to say that your client isn’t important, just that you’ve got so deeply embedded in the work that that’s all that you are focusing on.

Not only is it a professional curtesy to keep your client informed at all stages, but it is so reassuring to them.

Well, I know a lot of perspective clients ask this question before they even ask to see my work and I can understand their concerns, after all a piece of hand woven fabric is really quite expensive compared to fabric from a retailer who’s fabrics are mass produced and repeatable, even though they are beautiful!

So, what can I offer that’s different?
Well here’s what!

• My fabrics are designed exclusively for you. For example, one of your prize possessions can be used as the design source to ensure that the collection or piece woven by me will sit comfortably in your home and no one else will have anything like it!

• I will only use hand weaving methods that industry can’t emulate. I can manipulate my yarns and weaves in ways that industry can only dream about!  My designs can be current and cutting edge as a result.

• Top quality yarns, sourced in the UK or Europe, that haven’t had to travel thousands of miles from the Far East, are my preferred choice, but I can use yarns that you specify, again ensuring something totally unique for you.

• You will have access to my sketchbooks and mood boards at all stages, enabling you to feel totally informed.

• I will present a set of woven swatches for you to choose from before I start to weave you collection or piece of work.

In short, you will have a collection or piece of work that not  only reflects your self and your life style, but will have a little bit of me in it, and after all I’m an award winning textile designer!

Hi,

I want you to take a look at: Interior Designers – Build Your Tribe

The advice is useful for all with a web presence and not just Interior Designers!

Alison

Here is the image I’m currently working with.  I’ve designed a lovely motif that would make a great print repeat, but I’m going to be weaving with the Theo Moorman technique and have produced some linen swatches inlayed with wool which would make beautiful window panels.

Euonymus design image

I’m just back from a great trend seminar at the Designer Forum in Nottingham.  Lynette of Nelly Rodi delivered a really useful and exciting seminar.

What surprised me, although I’m not sure why, was how closely Interiors follow  Fashion now.  Colours, fabrics and prints all over lap in a way that wouldn’t have happened just a few years ago.

I was pleased to see, also, that green will still be a big colour in A/W 10/11, particularly as I’m exhibiting, with Design Factory, again at 100% Design in September.   You may know from a previous post when I exhibited last year I had to use green to match the stand, well the same applies this year!  I wonder if I can slip in a touch of gold, as in one of the trends I’ve just seen!

I’ve just finished reading an interesting post on the Argoknot Blog which has got me thinking about life and my weaving.

Weaving is something that I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, well almost!  I remember vividly the day my sister came home from school with a small piece of hand weaving she had done and remember wanting to go to that same school so that I could learn to weave.  I must have been about 8 years old, maybe even younger, I know we left that house the Christmas afte my 8th birthday and that Christmas I got a small rigid heddle loom as a present.

I seem to have been weaving eversince and can’t imagine what my life would be like without it.

In the post on the Argoknot Blog Karl Paulnack talks about how the Greeks understood the meaning of music:

“The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.”

Well that’s how I feel about weaving.  It’s  been the one constant in my life that has glued it together.  The one constant that has helped in major times of trouble.  It keeps me going when life is tough, calms me when I’m stressed, gives me purpose when I’ve lost the way.

So how can weaving be like music, well all I can say is that it has a rhythm, just like music and the better the weaver you become, the more the rhythm is aparent.  There’s a rhythm t0 the threading of each pattern, a rhythm to the treadling, whether you’ve got 6 treadles to press with your feet or one that drives a computer, a rhythm to throwing your shuttle and beating the weft into position.

I know of number of musicians who are weavers, so there must be something in this, maybe they will be able to answer that better than me, a meer music lover who can play the descant recorder and used to be able to play the piano, but it was the weaving that came first for me, not the music!