some rather gorgeous plushies at plush-o-holic - with fabulous big sleepy eyes.

Exhibition: In the World: Head hand heart, 17th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial

Image: Sandy Elverd, Numbers Count, 2005, Photo: Michal Kluvanek

If you thought you had missed this fabulous event - you haven’t, it is touring to Artspace Mackay (23rd March - 29th April 2007)

The Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial is the pre-eminent recurrent fibre textile exhibition in Australia. This year’s theme, In the World: head, hand, heart, highlights works where traditional techniques are referenced or are used in contemporary textile practice. It’s an exhibition that challenges everything you ever thought about knitting, embroidery, weaving and appliqué. Even old blankets are reinvented as sculpture.

More information on textile events at ::textile and ::creative fibre NZ

I grew up in a time when kids were divided up pretty much in kindergarten into the kids who could draw well and those who couldn’t. I fell into the latter category. In graduate school I was determined to overcome my insecurities about this and devoted myself daily to improving my drawing.

A year ago when we were planning our fabric line that came to be called Mendhi, my husband Bill and I decided we would try to combine hand drawing and a layering process in Photoshop to create a rich, collage-like print. I was more than a little scared to stake a fabric line on my drawing skills but decided that it was time to get over it already. Bravely I hand drew the elements and Bill took the lead on layering. It took both of us to color the 28 prints because some patterns used 16 colors. We spent months designing this line. When we received the sample fabrics we were thrilled as they looked exactly how we imagined they would. The D1600 series (the wildflowers) we loved the most. We both declared that we would make shirts of those fabrics some day. D1604-632 was supposed to be made into curtains for our daughters room.

One month after the fabric came onto the market, a quilt made with this fabric appeared on the cover of American Patchwork & Quilting. For about 6 weeks we received 20-30 orders a day for this fabric. When we called Westminster (the new parent company of FreeSpirit fabrics, which had originally printed the line) to order more fabric, we were told that despite the fact that the line was selling out quickly, Westminster decided to discontinue production just two months after the line came on the market. We bought all of the remaining inventory and began to fill the 500+ orders we had. We knew that we were running out of fabric and it was hard to decide whether we should keep some for ourselves, but in the end we didn’t. Everyone who called seemed so excited about it that it was hard to hold anything back. This morning I cut the last piece of D1600-411, the fabric I had planned to make a shirt with. Bill and I were so sad. While we’re excited that the fabric was so well-received and has been shipped all over the world, it is sad to see a fabric we worked so hard on have such a short life. We know there will be more lines but I miss this one already.