A top-notch crafty day out

Had a fab day out on Thursday!

We went to Art in Action at Waterperry (near Oxford).  Imagine a beautiful house and gardens, taken over by at least 40 marquees jammed with all sorts of craftiness..and no rain.

There was a tent dedicated to Metalwork, glassblowing, printmaking, woodwork, plus many others, including of course TEXTILES! 

Exhibitors are hand-picked so everything is very high quality and there are a vast range of different skills on show.  Apart from marvelling at people's creativity, you can ask questions of the demonstrators, and of course pick up a few lovely items in the market, if your pocket allows!

Here are just a few highlights that inspired me:

Fabrics treated with light sensitive chemicals, then printed using plants etc and good old sunlight.  This is just a sample, but Barbara Gunter-Jones was also selling beautiful stitched collages made with these fabrics.

THE most amazing machine embroidered pictures by Rachel Sumner .  Apologies in advance for the picture quality, only had my iPhone with me.  This one uses a product label, amongst some clever machine stitching.

 And this one was an amazing fishing scene, complete with some blissfully unaware fishermen!

The most beautiful funky clothing with hand-painted scripts by Carole Waller.  Would have made a purchase here, but the likelihood of expensive silk being covered in baby food was just too high!

I also fell in love with Robert Race's automata.  My purse was out for this moose, whose eyes flick from side to side with the pendulum is swung, but common sense got the better of me and it stayed on the wall...darn it! might have to rethink that decision!

This is just a tiny snippet, check out the website, and do go next year if you get a chance, it's amazing.

x (feeling inspired!)