I spent the weekend working for NSEAD teaching art / textiles teachers. I do love teaching teachers, they are so enthusiastic. I was showing them lots of hand-sewn fabric manipulation so while they were quietly stitching away, I got some stitching done too. Kind of interactive sample-making.

I do love working with velvet. This is a silk/ viscose mix – a remnant I bought from Cloth House years ago. Not my usual vintage/recycled/organic fabric, but so utterly lovely that I had to do something with it. This is a small sample piece probably destined to be a bag. I have ideas for a small range of very luxurious bags floating around in my mind, so this is the first stage.

I’m also doing a bit of just playing around, fiddling with materials and seeing where it takes me. I’ve done a few applications for projects recently that are more conceptual than my work has every previously been. So even though I haven’t got the commissions, I’m playing with the ideas now and again. So this one is another November blue, a sort of collaboration, almost. A piece of lapis, cut, polished and given me by a friend, incorporated into a pincushion. It’s not finished, this is just a first draft. There is a lot more I want to do with this, but I’m not sure what yet.

I’ve got another piece on the go which is a longer-term project – burying fabric underground over the winter and digging it up in the Spring, following on from a project proposal a friend and I did for work based around archaeology. I’ve got the piece cut up ready, just haven’t yet mooted the idea to my landlord about burying stuff under his winter cabbages!

So I guess I’m stitching my way out of the November blues and starting the new year early full of new ideas and exciting things for 2010.