The world of me, The Making House and Basg2riches has been so busy over the last few months, that I’ve been pretty remiss on blogging. So here’s a quick fire catch up with what’s been going on:

We really enjoyed having our Focus on Nature exhibition by Michele McDonald from Redroo Creatives, Joanne Cooper Photography and Mark Smith.

I’ve been doing various projects; I really enjoyed working with Nottinghamshire Royal Society for the blind on Seeing Through Art, a project designed by Vicky Price of Squeegee Love, where myself and  Katie Stainer created theatrical dress pieces in response to the Upritchard exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary. It was great to see how different people responded to the exhibitions and the various recycling techniques we used.

I also took over an empty shop as part of the rEvive project in Long Eaton. My part of this was ‘ReForm’ where I asked the public to drop in and help me to make a shop entirely out of recycled materials. I wasn’t sure how it would go down, but was amazed at the positive response and the amount of people who dropped in to help and talk. We had weekly themes and worked on floristry, jewellery, lighting and then furniture. For more details do check out my blog on this reform4revive. This is a project I piloted years ago and it’s really exciting to see it develop; I’ve now been comissioned to develop this in a number of other towns.

Then we’ve had our regular dressmaking course, with Joelle Harris, which was our first fully booked course, yeah! It’s gone so well, we’ve new dates coming for spring and we’re also setting up a sewing course….but I’m going to get Joelle to tell you all about that!

We’ve had my regular jewellery and basic silversmithing course, which I’m thoroughly enjoying teaching, it’s lovely seeing people getting inspired to make all sorts of things. My trainee jewellers are so experimental, they’re keeping me on my toes! I think I’ll be doing a little more blogging on this as the ladies want a jewellery club too.

We’ve new work in the shop, knitted jewellery by Rhea Clements, felt kits and cards by Tigerlily, embroidered gifts by Stitch Galore, Purses by Redferns, lots of new cards from Miss Pitchy Patchy, Gaynor Pugh, Frankie Toms……I’m going to be doing weekly features on our designer makers.

And next we’ve got our SWISH and lots of activities to do with PINT