TextileArts news and re:views

Call For Entries

The Textile Directory has announced their Spellbinding Textiles Competition, open to anybody with an interest in any area of textiles, including fashion, interiors, textile art and design and 3D work.

The theme of the competition is magic and entrants are asked to produce an item based on their interpretation of this theme.

The overall winner of the competition will receive £1000 to spend on Pfaff products and there will be an exhibition of the 30 best entries at The Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch in February 2009.

The closing date of the competition is 31 October 2008. Anybody wishing to enter the competition will need to submit 3 - 4 images of their finished piece plus a short artist's statement by this date to or you can post a CD of your images to

The Textile Directory, 8 King Charles Court, Evesham, Worcestershire WR11 4RF

A gallery of entries will also be included on The Textile Directory website.

More information at Spellbinding Textiles Competition.

Bags2Riches 2008 is the 3rd annual handbag competition to prevent homelessness.

The brief is to create an original handbag to be eligible to win the "The Most Original Handbag Award" with Grand Prize Package. The deadline for entries is August 20, 2008.

The judges will select 10 finalists, with selection criteria including originality, unique design elements, and quality of workmanship. The finalists will be highlighted in a fashion show at the Artsgarden in downtown Indianapolis on Wednesday, October 8 2008, between 11am and 2pm. The Grand Prize winner will be determined by the most purchased votes, and each of the ten final handbags will go home with a lucky voter.

Bags not chosen to be a finalist will be sold or auctioned, with the proceeds benefiting Trusted Partners' efforts to prevent homelessness in Indianapolis. Trusted Partners is an organisation that matches volunteer mentors with families and individuals in homeless prevention programmes to increase the number of people who remain housed.

For an entry form and more information, go to www.bags2richesindy.org.

Please Touch!

Textile artists (individuals and groups) are invited to submit a piece of work for Tactile Textiles, an exhibition at The Red House Museum, in Christchurch, Dorset, from 5 July to 25 August 2008.

The exhibition will provide a stimulating and exciting experience, enabling visitors to touch the exhibits. When we are working with textiles, we are constantly handling them, yet in exhibitions the urge to touch is usually restrained by "Please do not touch" signs. This deliberately tactile exhibition will dispense with this barrier and create a display that can be touched, experienced and enjoyed by all, and especially by children and visually impaired people.

There will be various prizes including cash awards from CADArts and an Xpression Embellisher machine from Janome. In addition Workshop on the Web, the online embroidery magazine, have donated a cash prize of £50 and there are embroidery supplies from Coats Crafts UK, Fibrecrafts, Jennifer Gail Threads and Gillsew.

Organised by CADArts, (Christchurch & District Arts), the competition is open to anyone and you can enter by post if you pay the return postage. The event is being supported by the Culture, Learning and Lifestyle Action Group of the Christchurch Community Partnership.

For further details please visit the Tactile Textiles page on the CADArts web site.

Susan Sorrell has recently created the Fiber Arts/Mixed Media network on the social networking site Ning. It's free to join and members can post information about classes, artwork, techniques, shows, and web resources, share their work, seek advice, and build community. The more people who participate the more wide-ranging this resource will become, so do check it out...

Exhibition of Contemporary Textile Art

August 4th to 12th 2007 ~ Venue 10, Pittenweem Arts Festival 2007

Edge - Textile Artists Scotland have been invited to exhibit at the Pittenweem Arts Festival 2007.

The Pittenweem Arts Festival is an extremely popular major summer event and is now the highlight of the annual life of this pretty East Neuk village in Fife. The festival, which is in its 24th year, features well over seventy exhibitions, plus musical, theatrical and other events. Come along - it really is an inspiring event!

There will be a wide range of innovative and exciting textile work on display and for sale e.g. framed and unframed artworks, 3D items, bags, hats, scarves, cushions, textile jewellery, etc.

For further information please contact: D. Walker: Chairperson, 01382 776249; P Hann: Exhibitions Convenor, 01382 542749; or J Pitts: Publicity Secretary, 01738 444933.

http://www.edge-textileartists-scotland.com/events/watersedge.html
http://www.pittenweemartsfestival.co.uk/index.html

Design-a Print is a fabric design competition from The Clothes Show. The winning design fabric will be made up into a dress for the M&S range. Closing date for competition entries: 7th June 2007.

Bias and The Works Festival Of Art And Design, Alberta, Canada, are looking for people to participate in a fashion/art project.

Each participant will receive an identical kit that contains a selection of fabrics, notions, and some surprises. Participants then have one month to transform these raw materials in to a garment or work of art.

The deadline to sign up is Tuesday, March 20th, 2007. There is a fee of $30.00 to participate in the project, to cover the cost of the materials you are given.

Find out more and see pictures from previous Consistent Variable Projects at www.myspace.com/biasalberta

Download the Call for Participation (PDF).

International Juried Exhibition

September 6 - October 18 2007

Entry deadline: postmarked March 30 2007

Once long ago when I lived in a daylight world, the world being too much for me, I would have gone to grass. Face downward and very close to the green stems, I became one with the ants and aphids and sow bugs, no longer a colossus. And in a ferocious jungle of grass I found the distraction that meant peace.
John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

What artist has not been inspired at some point by the patterns, textures, and colors provided so readily in the natural world? We look to the lean, strong lines of a bare tree in winter, listen to the harsh tapping sound of a woodpecker outside the window, marvel at the crooked forms of geese flying south for the winter. The natural world provides the creative self with a universe of contrasts: chaos and calm, empty and abundant, singular and repetitious. We relate to the colors, forms, and shapes of nature, as well as to the wellspring of concepts discovered in its happenings.

In conjunction with the Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery at Bristol Community College, the Textile Study Group of New Bedford, MA invites entries for a juried exhibition of yardage influenced by the infinite microcosm of the natural world.

They are seeking work that conforms to the feeling Steinbeck describes in the above quote where an artist goes "face downward...no longer a colossus", in order to explore the intricacies of our environment.

The competition is open to all artists. Any material is acceptable, but the artist must use a textile technique or combination of techniques traditionally associated with textiles (knitting, printing, crocheting, dyeing, knotting, netting, feltmaking, coiling, weaving, papermaking, etc.) Three-dimensional work can be incorporated into the two-dimensional format of the yardage length.

Jurors
Denyse Schmidt, nationally known quilt designer and artist
Laura Strand, Associate Professor of Art, Textiles at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Download a PDF with full information and an entry form from Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery

QuiltArtLugano 2007

1-2-3 June 2007 - 1st Quilt Festival, Lugano, Switzerland

An exciting new artistic and cultural event takes place in the beautiful Ticino town of Lugano in June 2007. Organised by a group of women who are active in textile art, the Festival will include:

• events to promote and develop contemporary and traditional textile art
• exhibitions of Swiss and foreign artists in several locations within Lugano and Montagnola
• annual meeting of the Swiss Patchwork Association
• workshops and courses
• an international competition, and competitions for schoolchildren and for local artists.
• charity sales of Fabric Art cards
• trade stalls selling textile art materials

Deadline for entry in the international competition is 31 December 2006

QuiltArtLugano web site

In December 2006 the here gallery in Bristol is holding a 'shopping show' - Little and Lots. Artists are invited to submit up to four pieces of work - no bigger than A4 in size, and ready to hang. All work must be available for sale, and once a piece has been sold it will be taken away by the shopper and a new piece hung in its place. The gallery will take a 25% commission and their biggest sellers tend to be pieces priced between £20 and £80.

The deadline for submission is 1 December 2006. Little and Lots opens on 2 December with live music and runs until 30 December. Full details from the here gallery web site.