Crucible Launch

Last night we went to a rather nice drinks party... the launch of the exhibition Crucible at Gloucester Cathedral.


The exhibition features over 70 sculptures scattered round the Cathedral and its grounds, including work by household names like Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley, in a huge range of artistic styles. It's the biggest art event to happen in Gloucester for years, and I think the Cathedral is a wonderful setting for it - looking round the exhibition last night I saw details of the building I'd never noticed before, and I used to work there!

We were too busy chatting to friends, discussing the more controversial works and celeb-spotting last night to take pics (Alex James from Blur counts as a celeb, right?) but you can see the Crucible website for more info, or browse photos by visitors to the exhibition on Flickr.

I'm definitely going to be revisiting the sculptures I liked during the next couple of months (the exhibition runs until the end of October and entry to the Cathedral is free).

Designer Crafts

This blog post is a little late - it was meant to follow on from my post about the lovely Quilted Jewels exhibition I went to during the Three Choirs Festival here in Gloucester a few weeks ago... but then I got sick and my blogging schedule got abandoned! Please forgive me :)

As well as the quilts exhibition I made it along to an exhibition and sale of "designer crafts" in a huge marquee outside the Cathedral. The exhibition featured work made by members of The Cotswold Craftsmen, The Guild of Herfordshire Craftsmen and The Worcestershire Guild of Designer Craftsmen.


The marquee was jam packed with lovely things - stained glass, pottery, woooden bowls and boxes, handmade furniture, leather bags and belts, paintings, photographs, woven textiles, metalwork and a whole assortment of jewellery.



I was particularly smitten by Rachel Padley's glazed bowls, the adorable wooden animals by John Johnson (we're big fans of these and are gradually building up our own mini wooden zoo - so far we've got an otter, an owl, a rat and a wonderful badger) and the totally stunning stained glass by Frans Wesselman. (Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take close-up photos of any of the individual stalls in the marquee, but please do follow the links to see lots of images on the designers' own websites).

Quilted Jewels

As part of the Three Choirs Festival there have been lots of concerts, exhibitions and other events happening this week in Gloucester. I went along to St Nicholas Church to see a selection of exhibitions with a crafty theme...


There was an exhibition of work by textile artist Jane O'Leary - the posts on her blog about preparing for the exhibition are really interesting. I particularly loved this piece, the details in it are just lovely:


I fell totally in love with the selection of beautiful engravings by Sarah Van Niekerk (you can see lots of images of her current work here).


The main exhibition was "Quilted Jewels", a display of quilts by the members of three local quilting groups: Montpelier Quilters, Highnam Quilters and Churchdown Patchwork and Quilters.

Seeing the church covered in all those colourful patterns was a wonderful sight - they were hanging everywhere and draped all over the pews in a riot of colour. My little camera struggled a bit with the lighting conditions but I'm sure you can use your imagination a bit!


A few of my favourites were... "Mediterranean Madness" by Linda Simmons:


"Stained Glass Window Quilt" by Mary Davies and "Heraldry Hanging" by Pat Wilson (which included fabrics hand-dyed by Pat's daughter Cathy):


"Farmyard Fun" by Linda Simmons and "Freedom Road" by Valerie Pickard:


"Dazzling Diamonds" by Mary Davies and "Rice Bowls" by Linda Simmons from a Kaffe Gasset design:


"Joined Hands" and "Diamonds are Forever" by Polly Sutcliffe:


And a hand-pieced quilt by Anna Jones called "The First of Many" which was started years ago, abandoned half-finished in an attic and then re-started and finished with the encouragement of the Highnam Quilters group.


I also couldn't resist taking some snaps of the textiles and patterns in the church while I was there :)