Barkcloth to Artcloth - Part II

Do you remember in November when I decorated a piece of barkcloth for the fabulous collaborative project between Bobby Britnell and Janet Middleton of Starchild shoes to raise money for Hands Up for Uganda? If you missed it you can read all about it here:

 

http://www.ginaferrari.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/barkcloth-to-artcloth.html

 

 

I'd forgotten all about it over Christmas and then a couple of days ago I was browsing on Facebook when I just happened upon photographs of shoes made from my cloth

 

There was quite a bit of jumping up and down with excitment let me tell you... because they are so cute!

 

And if you visit the Barkcloth to Artcloth facebook page you can see photos of lots more of the shoes that have been made so far

 

They are going to look amazing together when they are exhibited at the Fashion and Embroidery show at the NEC in March. I can't wait to go and see it.

Barkcloth to Artcloth

I always love the idea of artists collaborating on projects and so  couldn't resist joining in with the collaboration between Janet Middleton of Star-Child Shoes and Bobby Britnell, especially as it is also raising funds for Bobby's wonderful charity Hands up for Uganda.

 

 

The idea was to start with a piece of barkcloth which is a traditional material from Uganda, available from Bobby for £3. We were then instructed to decorate this barkcloth in anyway we liked and to be as "funky and whacky" as we liked. My piece of cloth already had quite a few holes over the surface so I decided to use these holes and back the cloth with another fabric making a feature of reverse applique.

 

Taking inspiration from the name "Star-child shoes" I used stars as my theme and started by cutting a cardboard stencil and stencilling stars in textile paint over the surface of my barkcloth

 

I then very carefully cut out the stars, keeping them to use later, and backed my barkcloth with a gold fabric... nothing subtle going on here.

 

I stitched the two pieces of cloth together with gold machine stitching, hand stitched around each star shaped hole and then machine stitched the cut out stars onto the surface. I supposed I could have stopped there but decided to throw all good taste out of the window and covered the surface with more gold stitching and sequins. By this point it was getting dark and there was no chance of a good photo...

 

But I was so desperate to get the cloth into the post and off to Janet at Star-Child shoes that I took a picture of my finished cloth anyway so you will have to squint your eyes and imagine the true colour of my end result.

 

Janet will then make up all the decorated pieces of barkcloth artcloth into gorgeous little Art Shoes like these pictured, which will be exhibited next year at two ICHF exhibitions in Birmingham and London. Can't wait to see them all together!

A Scandinavian Hands Up For Uganda!

I was going to say this story started about 9 months ago but I should probably go back further.  A few years ago the wife of the Congregational Church minister in our neighbouring village started a series of community suppers held in the church school room, to raise money for both the church and various charities. Over the years different people have hosted the suppers with different themes... and so it came about that at a Scottish themed supper at the beginning of this year I happened to ask my friend Anne if they had ever held a Scandinavian supper. (We had both recently bought a Scandinavian baking book so had a shared interest)

 

 

And from that simple question the seed was sown and we move rapidly forward to last night... our Scandinavian Supper. We had a few trial runs of the menu in advance, multiplied the quantities to feed 44 people and got together a small team of willing cooks...

 

 

The school room was decorated with a Scandinavian theme...

 

The people arrived and we then set about serving up vast quantities of meatballs!

 

Of course there was cake too... Norwegian spice cake...

 

and Swedish Tosca cake.

 

For entertainment we had baskets of lego...

 

With  a competition for the best lego models...

 

And there was a sing-a-long to well known Abba songs and even some dancing.

 

We had a gorgeous blonde maiden preparing the food and a viking to serve the Glogg

 

And there was even a Swedish Chef!!! ( I own up... it's me)

 

We all had a brilliant evening but best of all was that we managed to raise lots of money... Anne and I chose "Hands Up For Uganda" as our charity which if any of you receive Bobby Britnell's newsletter will know is a really worthwhile charity that works at grassroots level in the village of Kisaabwa in Southern Uganda. Please do follow the links to find out more about this fantastic worthwhile cause.