Sunday at the Craft Fair

I was rostered on to look after the Designing Women stall this morning so I spent the entire day there.

My friend Jennifer is visiting from the US and she decided to go to the Fair too. We met up a bit after 12.30 after she had had a look around and had coffee, a pie (of course) and a good chat. Then she had to go to visit her mother and meet up with her brother. I wandered about, went to a couple of workshops and took some photos. Forgot I needed to take one of the stall, though.

The photos I took were of the "Eyeline" exhibition by the TACTile group (Jenny Bowker, Dianne Firth, Helen Gray, Beth Miller and Beth and Tevor Reid) from Canberra. This is their third exhibition and again is absolutely stunning. My photos are not, though I have some detail shots that I hope will inspire me. I bought a book of postcards as well.

Then I took a few photos of the Art to Wear exhibition. This year the emphasis was on "The Next Generation" and more than half the garments on show were produced by secondary school students. There was some excellent work and it looks like this aspect of textile art is flourishing, but only in the private schools. There were no examples from any of the government schools, though perhaps this is understandable. The raw materials are expensive and the out of school time required, both of students and teachers, is considerable.

The theme for the Year 12 students from one school was "Bridal" and I particularly liked this one. I didn't note the name of the maker, though, which is remiss of me.


When the Show closed at 5pm I took down the display pieces from the stall, packed them up and dragged everything to the car. My feet were really hurting by then!