The Little Gems are featured on the Felt blog at the moment, so have a look!

It’s hard to believe that it’s maybe only 9 months since we all started getting together, there must be a Gem baby due any minute by those calculations! We’ll be trying to get some things together to run parallel to the up-coming Amazing Lace exhibition at Pataka. At the same time there’ll be a textile exhibition also at Pataka, so mark them in your diary!

AMAZING LACE
21 June– 28 September

Amazing Lace celebrates a current revival of lace ‘reinterpreted’ in contemporary art by a range of exciting artists including Lonnie Hutchinson, Jeff Thomson, Emily Wolfe, Cristina Beth, Ilse-Marie Erl and Kate Rivers. Photographs, jewellery, paintings and sculpture inspired by the intricate patterns of lace help to redefine how lace can be used and elevate it as an art form.

Exquisite historical lace will also be featured, including samples of the most famous European lace varieties such as Honiton, Chantilly and Brussels; these will be set against a backdrop of historical photographs illustrating how the tradition of lace was translated and adapted by colonial settlers in New Zealand.

The exhibition will enable students to study some of the techniques and processes involved in producing lace: the positive and negative spaces in the different designs and the historical impact of the social value of lace. Hands-on gallery activities will involve using, weaving and shaping threads and creating lace designs out of paper.

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SHARING STORIES – Textiles from around the world
21 June – 21 September

This exhibition will glow with the colours and textures of over 80 garments and textiles from around the world – each piece with its own innate story woven around it about how it journeyed to New Zealand.

We will unravel some of those stories and introduce your students to the cultures from which they were created and how and why they were made. Fabrics and garments from places like the Congo, Jerusalem, Myanmar, Malaysia, Iraq and India will adorn the walls, made out of everything from raffia, bark, and silk through to wool. The textiles in this exhibition represent thousands of years of history and they have been gathered together from private collections found all over the Wellington region.

(Orginally posted at Helen’s)

Today at our session we gave our friend Emma much love. Carmen had repaired her beloved Mr Polar bear and Shelley had painted her a picture of Chilli peppers – because she is super hot and really saucy!

Shelley drew the winner of a Dotee doll with the help of her lovely assistant (and great hand model) Helen. Congratulations Ms Amy.

Sweet Helen was the host of our Gem Session today – thank you sweetie. As usual it was a natter and a moan and a bit of slapping (when someone puts themselves down) and a bit of encouraging too.We entered into a giveaway – which was good, but even better – I was given a lovely brooch on the spot from Helen!We made some funky, funky for the craftstock event we will be at on Thursay evening, but we are all finding it hard to get into the groove – new year and all. I think we need to go out dancing and get all the stress out .

THE most anticipated craft event of the year is on its way. This is a MUST for all craft lovers and Xmas shoppers. Be there or Be square dudes and dudettes!!

We had a great time at Pataka on Saturday, it was all a blur! Now we are all madly trying to replenish our stock for next Sunday and the Paekakariki Fair (Nov 25) 10-2pm. Hope we see you there!

Carmen came along today with an amazing stash of resin brooches she’d been working on with little treasures embeded in them.

I was all set to start using the resin until she told me we need to have a proper mask and safety goggles – next week then! Hopefully she’ll post some at her Etsy store soon.

Jackie was on a roll she cranked out some fantastic button brooches for the market at Pataka on Saturday.

Then Carmen had another take on button brooches, all bling of course!

How about these adorable little pins by Shelly!

You can see the whole photo shoot at our flickerset

We had our weekly session today at J’s house and it was great as usual. J drooled over each and every one of her buttons and we ooohed and aaahed with her. H started on her Christmas ornaments and C could sadly not join us this week. I was working on an apron and some pincusion ideas.

A toadstool pincusion was the result of our creative brainstorming and I passed it on as a prototype to C as she was having a not such fun day. While making it, I was pondering on the “session” and what it means to me and wrote about it on my blog http://soheartfelt.wordpress.com/

thanks Gems for a great session

Ziguzagu is the name of the amazing warehouse in Melbourne where I got the gorgeous vintage Japanese fabric, which covers these button badges. They are displayed on giant playing cards, nice hand aye? I’ll be selling these with the Little Gems at the Pataka Craft Market – Nov 17th, 10am-4pm.

I loved Shelly’s buttons so much I had to give it a go!
A handmade button and thrifted doily for Helen’s bff Billie in Melbourne.