If you haven’t seen the new website sponsored by American Patchwork & Quilting you are in for a treat. Although the site is new and still evolving, the most helpful thing I’ve found so far is the video for learning how to bind a quilt. While this method differs from the method I use, it is the most common method of binding and beginning quilters will find it especially helpful. While I’ve seen other step-by-step tutorials on binding, the video format is so much easier to follow than text.
As you have probably noticed by now I am a little weak about Sweden, Swedish craft, crafters and designers. Yes, to be honest – about everything Swedish! I’ve been brought up with Astrid Lindgren´s Pippi Longstocking Pippi Långstrump, Emil of Maple Hills Emil i Lönneberga and stuff like that and I’ve read the same stories for my own kids when they were small. I’ve spent several summer holidays in Sweden and it always makes me feel a bit envious. Swedish nature is so much bigger and more “unspoiled” than what we have in little Denmark. We have no big forests and vast areas. In Denmark every spot of soil is cultivated and seems a bit overcrowded so to say… and even more important: Sweden seems to embrace it’s artists, designers, crafters and hemslöjd devotees in a way we don’t do here.
Luckily Sweden is very close, our neighbour, and it’s very easy to go there. So let me be constructive now: it’s not fair to compare, it’s better to enjoy the difference and to look at it as a source of inspiration!
A place I´d like to draw your attention to is Säterglänten another craft centre not far from Leksand where you can go for both 1 year courses and as well as for short week courses. During the summer you even find courses for children. In other terms: it´s possible to bring the whole family!
Of course you’re also welcome to just drop by to visit the students´ exhibitions, the well stocked craft shop and the summer café.
I have been planning to post about the glorious work of Cal Lane for a while now…but when I saw {in my new copy of Selvedge Magazine} that she was taking part in the exhibition ‘Radical Lace and Subversive Stitching’ which is currently showing at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York I thought this the perfect opportunity [and perfect for WhipUp!] to do so!
Cal’s work first jumped out to me because of it’s delicacy and beauty…initially I was wowed as I thought she must have created the work with a fine piercing saw, cutting all these striking fretwork lace-like patterns into the steel – I was even more blown away when I found out she achieves this degree of delicacy with a industrial blow torch…working to burn out the organic patterning as she goes.
With this [sublime skill set] in mind…I so enjoyed browsing her website where her portfolio shows work ranging from Fine Art installations to more object based sculptures and pieces that have an almost jewellery-like finesse and lightness to them…the images above show Lanes ability to take an every day object and through applying her unique style and process, can turn our notions of functionality on their heads, revealing beauty and [an etirely different] form through the removal of material and the addition of pattern.
If you are in New York, the Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting exhibition runs until the 17th of June…I think it is great that a metalworker has been included in this show [I dearly wish I could see it!] and I think Cal Lanes inclusion will be a wonderful, and truly subversive, contribution to the other great work on show.
Future girl has recently started selling the pattern for her hand sewn, felt octopus. The three-page PDF includes the pattern and detailed instructions for making your own felt octopus.
Her all-white version, Octophrost, received honorable mention in Whiplash Gifts and Decorations.
