"Textiles in Focus" Cottenham event

For three days this last week end Cottenham, near Cambridge has been host to an excellent textiles event. There were a comprehensive selection of traders, fabulous  hand dyed yarns, threads, and fabrics, beautiful silks and my favourite The African Fabric shop! This fool and her money were easily parted! 

I was particularly interested in the exhibition by an Anglian group called Diversity with a very varied membership producing an interesting variety of textile work.

These were the pieces that particularly caught my eye:

A tryptic " Copper Plate" by Mary Mcintosh. Sadly hung so that you could not photograph the three sections together! Fabulous print, discharge and appliqué.

"Breakdown Sample from Annette Morgan was a very eye catching abstract.

I absolutely loved this piece "The Centre" from Lori Jay Donaldson with wonderful handstich to embellish the mono print.

"In the Lands of the Palm- Shades of Blue" from Susan King combined indigo and rusted fabrics with interesting free machine quilting.

Unusually for me I was drawn to this pictorial piece. Interesting used of lace for the sea foam, I suspect that because I love the place the piece spoke to me. "Sea Mist at Whitby" from Jacqueline Glyde.

"Reflections 1" from Jenny Sandler had loads of movement and textural interest.

Finally just look at the detail packed into Kirsten Yeates' "Culture Mix" collar. I loved the folded fabric and stitch detail.

I bought a length of cloth from Maggie Relph, another of Esther's creations fro Ghana which this time is destined to become an over shirt! Beautiful colours. I also bought one of Maggie's baskets, my second! Elsewhere I bought a length of silk/cotton mix fabric which has lustre and handle and stunning shade of olive green and some hand dyed viariagated perle thread.