Handmade Christmas at the 02 – a tale of woe

Gosh it’s been ages since I had the time to update my blog!  Before Christmas I was sewing madly making things for Handmade Christmas at the 02, then it was Christmas, and then I got ‘the bug’ so feeling quite poorly now.

Regarding the handmade Christmas organised by Peninsula Exhibitions I am sorry to report that this was a big disappointment. Not just to me but many stall holders are talking via a FB group about taking the organisers to the small claims court and the Office of Fair Trading.  The event was not the amazing prestigious wonderful occasion it was made out to be when we booked.  For visitors there was certainly a wonderful variety of high standard crafts as many people had been fooled into exhibiting as well as us.

My first concern on arriving was that my stand was not where I had booked it in the ‘Folksy Trader village’, near the entrance and opposite what was supposed to be a bar/café.  No, it was at the end of the market opposite an empty dark space.  There were many issues which I am not up to recording today but please be very wary should you think about exhibiting with Peninsula Exhibitions again.  They refuse to offer any compensation to stall holders for various mistakes at this event and to refund our deposits for the Spring event which we now do not wish to attend – despite admitting it was their error in not placing our stall in the spot we booked!

They also charged visitors £8 for the first two days and £6.50 on the Sunday – not the £5 stated when we booked – so visitors had paid a lot before they got to us!  They didn’t seem to have spent any money at all on festive lighting, music or decoration.  Many stalls were so dark the goods couldn’t be seen!

Folksy have been very supportive – you can read their blog post about the event here

http://blog.folksy.com/2013/12/20/handmade-at-the-o2

hoping to feel better in the new year and get back to making things again.  Hope all you Handmade Mondayers had a good holiday and best wishes for the new year!

 

Free Motion Quilting

Ooh it was an exciting day yesterday!  Of course it was the Dr Who 50th Birthday show but I was also on a free motion quilting course!  I had a lovely day learning how to free motion quilt (it’s not easy!).  Basically it sounds great – no keeping to straight lines – you can just wibbly wobbly all over the place – but actually that’s quite hard to do evenly!  Anyway I am now a lot better than before I went and so hope to be doing lots of quilted items with this free motion style of quilting in the future.  Here is one thing we did learning how to do different types of stippling!  – some loose threads there as this was just a first practice!

cream fabric with self coloured stippling

stippling

 

As well as the course I was also getting ready for my first big fair in 3 weeks!  The passes came on Friday!  I was so excited!

exhibitor pass for Handmade Christmas at the 02

exhibitor passes

And lastly, I have been working with my ‘hippy’ fabric – I have loved every minute of it as I  really am just an old hippy!!  These would be great for free motion quilting I think – swirly hippy psychedelic patterns!! (more loose threads as these are not finished off yet).

tablet covers in psychedelic hippy fabric

hippy fabric bags and tablet covers

And now over to Handmade Monday!  I love my Sunday evening stroll round the blogs!