Katesca‘s vibrant photograph really brings out the gorgeous colours of the fabric wrapped around the Baobab Tree sculpture next to The Hayward gallery on the Southbank.

The work is called Under the Baobab and is part of the Festival of the World celebrations.

The baobab tree is sometimes known as the tree of life because it provides shelter, fruit, bark for making clothes and ropes and store water. The fabric was chosen by the the textile design MA students from Chelsea College of Art and Design and represents their communities of origin.

There’s so many exciting things going on in London this summer, bring your camera and add your photos to the Visit London Flickr pool.

Fabrications in Hackney is hiding an exciting secret in the basement – a brand new Imaginerium workshop space for craft classes and fun.

Established over a decade ago in Broadway Market, Fabrications is a studio, gallery and shop that has already made a mark in the London craft scene, bringing contemporary textiles to a wider audience and actively supporting craftivism – using craft to change the world for the better.

On Saturday I was invited along to an open day to see the new space and sew a grocery bag based on the design of a standard a carrier bag, but from pretty offcuts of fabric – a perfect example of recycling and modern design. (You’ll need a large grocery bag if you go to Broadway Market, especially if you love fresh walnut bread from artisan bakers and your willpower is enfeebled by the siren song of a nice bit of cheese.)

The room is kitted out with all the essentials you’ll need to make beautiful things, including new sewing machines and tea. A large glass roof at the back lets in lots of natural light. The new space is a warm, welcoming and friendly place.

The classes reflect designer and Fabrications owner Barley Massey’s passion for upcycling, eco design and passing on useful traditional skills. You can learn to knit, sew, quilt and make clothes. There are also classes where you can transform the boring things in the back of your wardrobe into something new and personalised, make yarn from old clothes and a craft club where you can bring along your latest project for advice.

fabrications1.co.uk

The Foundling Museum has embraced heartache and hope in their latest exhibition, Threads of Feeling. The show displays some of the tiny tokens that mothers left with their babies when they gave them up to London’s Foundling Hospital in the 1700s.

The hospital was founded by Thomas Coram who wanted to give abandoned children a decent life. Children were accepted anonymously so women were not publicly shamed into abandoning their babies elsewhere, but mothers were encouraged to leave a small token which was then added to the admission books with the details of the child.

The tokens on display include ribbons, fabric scraps and baby clothes. The scraps range from plain rough worsted to the occasional piece of fancy silk brocade, indicating the mothers came from all levels of society. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the fashions of the period.

Although there are about 5000 textile tokens in the archives, there is only room to display a small number of them in this exhibition and it really left me wanting to see more.

One of the most touching pieces is a crudely embroidered felt heart which indicates how reluctant the mother was to give up her child. The exhibition and the museum are both incredibly moving. I felt quite emotional on the train home, and will be reflecting on my visit for a long time.

When you’ve seen Threads of Feeling, head upstairs and explore the main collection to find out what life was like in the hospital, and what happened to the children after they left. You’ll also find out about the work of the Coram charity who still support and bring hope to disadvantaged children today.

To link the theme of threads throughout the building, VV Rouleaux‘s Annabel Lewis has created a waterfall of ribbons and bows which cascades down through the stairwell of the grand staircase and looks absolutely stunning.

Threads of Feeling at the Foundling Museum 14 October – 6 March. Adults £7.50, concessions £5, under 16s free. www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk

Looking for something to do this weekend? Why not pop up to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace? Yesterday the sewing machines were out under a canopy of fabric scraps!

The biggest craft show in London is packed with stalls selling sewing and knitting supplies, there are exhibitions of work from craft guilds, textile graduates and artists, and you can even take a class to learn something new!

The show is open today and tomorrow. Find out more at www.twistedthread.com

What did you do this weekend? Add your photos to the Visit London Flickr pool.

A gorgeous new craft workshop space called Homemade London has just opened in Portman Village. Last night I popped along and learned how to make a fully lined designer tote bag, made new friends, and did a vanishing trick with a piece of gooey chocolate cake.

Everyone was having so much fun that friendly passers by kept popping in to see what we were up to, admire our bags and find out how they could sign up for the next class!

The class includes tuition, fabric (vintage and designer – my bag above is made from a Marimekko print) and, bliss, a light supper, which is very welcome when you’ve just dashed from work to a class and won’t get home till late.

Homemade London has plenty of sewing machines and space for creating. You can learn how to sew bags and lingerie, make jewellery or sniff out your perfect perfume.

As well as classes, Homemade London also offer a sewing café – you can rent a sewing machine or overlocker from £10 an hour during the day or evening and work on your own projects. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s worth a visit just to see the astonishing sewing machine wallpaper!

Even the location is perfect, if you’ve been shopping on Oxford Street all day and found nothing but inspiration, you can pop round the corner and whip up your perfect accessory!

Classes from £99, Sewing Cafe from £10.
www.homemadelondon.com

Horrockses were known for their bright cotton print summer dresses which were widely available ready made, were easy to wear and effortlessly stylish. To keep the dresses at the cutting edge of fashion, Horrockses worked with lots of young designers and artists, including a young Terrance Conran who sold 20 designs to the firm in 1950.

The exhibition is absolutely stunning, every dress looks as fresh and modern as the day it was made. The dresses pay homage to Dior’s New Look, with full skirts and tiny waists, and the prints are all about having fun – giant roses, lobsters, dancing girls and even a dress featuring radishes and hard boiled eggs!

A Horrockses dress would have cost between £4 and £7, (£80 to £130 in today’s money) so they weren’t cheap, but they were the dresses everyone wanted, saved for or copied. The dresses gained even more prestige after they were worn by the Queen. Princess Margaret wore a Horrockses dress to feed a giraffe in Africa in 1956.

The exhibition includes buyers books with photos, samples and elegant fashion illustrations. (There were two collections each year, with 150-160 styles created from 70-80 prints).

If you have a vintage style summer dress in your wardrobe, I suggest you wear it when you see the exhibition. If you don’t have one, you’ll be desperate for one when you leave! The Fashion and Textile Museum is where the fashionable people will be this summer. Go! Go now!

Horrockses Fashions at the Fashion and Textile Museum. 9 July – 24 October. £6.50 adult, £3.50 concessions. Open Wed – Sun 11:00-18:00. www.ftmlondon.org

The Concise Dictionary of Dress

Blythe House near Olympia is the V&A’s storehouse – chock full of precious things that the museum doesn’t have room to display. The building was originally a Victorian bank and it’s not hard to imagine hundreds of sallow-faced clerks trudging to work each day through its slightly grim courtyard.

The Concise Dictionary of Dress is part exhibition, part immersive experience, and also serves as a quick whip through Blythe House’s myriad storerooms and catalogues. Security is understandably tight (it took curator Judith Clarke three years to get permission to use the space) and CDoD is shown to a maximum of seven people at a time.

The show involves 11 exhibits located at various points throughout the building – the first is on the roof, the final one is at sub-basement level, with many staircases, storerooms and security points along the way. Each exhibit takes a word associated with dressing – fashionable, loose, comfortable, etc. – and displays articles of clothing and/or accessories accompanied by a card where several definitions of the word are written (author Adam Phillips‘ contribution). You’re asked to read and observe and to not ask questions until the end.

It’s hard to describe the show itself – a lot is left to your own interpretation and experience – for example, the resin statue on the roof for “Armoured”, lit golden by the afternoon sunlight when I saw it, would seem completely different in wet weather. I’m sure some would find all this pretentious (in fact, that was one of the words) but for me it was thought-provoking and intriguing, not least due to the opportunity for tantalising glimpses of the little-seen treasures of Blythe House as we were taken through.

Concise Dictionary of Dress is at Blythe House until 27 June.

Liberty
For the ultimate fabric shopping experience, head to Liberty and swoon over the lovely Liberty print cotton in this stunning department store. Look out for the special collection of fabric created for the V&A Quilts exhibition which is sold by the metre, as well as in smaller pieces just for patchworking which are charmingly known as fat quarters!

The Cloth Shop
The Cloth Shop is a Notting Hill fabric boutique and a rabbit warren of beautiful cloth. Check out the back room which is full of yummy designer remnants and Savile Row leftovers.

The Cloth House
The area round Berwick Street is home to lots of fabric shops, including the two shops which make up The Cloth House. One shop offers basics like cottons, suiting and ticking, the other sells luxuries – velvets, jersey and embellished fabric. You’ll also love nearby Boroviks, The Berwick Street Cloth Shop and Soho Silks which are great if you’re making something for a special occasion.

Creative Quilting
If you’re off to see the tapestries at Hampton Court Palace and the textiles at The Royal School of Needlework, you’re just round the corner from Creative Quilting who stock over 1,000 different quilting fabrics, including festive fabrics for special occasions.

Tikki Patchwork
Tikki Patchwork is stuffed with colourful fabric that’s perfect for patchworking and making pretty gifts. Tikki Patchwork is close to Kew Gardens and they’ve clearly been inspired by the exotic flowers and the beauty of nature when choosing their lovely cotton prints.

M Rosenberg & Son
OK, this isn’t a shop, but once a month, M Rosenberg & Son take over Hays Village Hall in Bromley and fill it with huge rolls of lovely fabric. As well as the basics, you’ll find astonishing bold Italian print cottons and other unusual stuff that isn’t on their website. A family business, M Rosenberg & Son have been selling fabric since 1946 and it’s now the son and grandson! www.mrosenbergandson.com

MacCulloch & Wallis
The ultimate haberdashery, MacCulloch & Wallis have three floors stocking everything you need to whip up the perfect couture outfit – the thread, fabric, zips and trim. You can even pick up a hat block and sinamay in every colour of the rainbow to make a matching hat.

Goldhawk Road
There’s loads of fabric shops in Goldhawk Road which sell all sorts of fabric from all over the world. One of our favourites is Classic Textiles which offers good quality silk, crepe de chine and suiting. A-One Fabric and the stalls in Shepherd’s Bush Market also stock a good range.

Cath Kidston
Did you know you can buy Cath Kidston fabric by the metre so you can make anything you like? We love the London street scene cotton fabric and the oil cloth in pretty spots and florals.

Joel & Son Fabrics
Joel & Son have an enormous shop near Edgware Road and have been selling everything from printed cottons to embroidered chiffon for over 30 years. If you can’t find it here, you’ll have to weave it yourself!

Did we miss out your favourite places to buy fabric in London?

Interior design company Sanderson are celebrating 150 years of decorating beautiful homes with a special exhibition at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum.

If you love interiors, fabric, design and beautiful things, you’ll love seeing Sanderson’s luxury wallpapers, textiles and pattern books from the archives. I loved this exhibition and my head is still spinning from all the gorgeous prints. My favourite bits included the wallpaper that looked like embossed leather and the cheerful adverts featuring bold clashing 60’s and 70s floral interiors.

Very Sanderson includes many large, beautiful, colourful samples which embrace every design style since Victorian times. It’s fascinating to see how Sanderson revive and redesign classic prints – the Rose and Peony wallpaper was designed in 1914 and you can still buy it today.

The exhibition really only scratches the surface of Sanderson’s collection; the thick log books and design ledgers hint at thousands of designs which are equally exquisite as the work on display but didn’t make the final show.

One of the ways Sanderson have kept their place as a leading name in decoration is by working with many leading designers over the last 150 years. As well as owning William Morris designs, Sanderson have worked with the Omega Workshops, Lucienne Day, Zandra Rhodes and are currently collaborating with contemporary artist Nina Saunders.

Sanderson’s designs were not exclusive to posh houses, Sanderson is sold on the high street. If you’ve got a pair of vintage floral curtains it might be worth having a gentle probe into the hems to see if there’s a manufacturers name printed on the selvage (I’ve got my mum’s childhood bedroom curtains from Sanderson hanging up in my little craft room).

This exhibition made me desperate to go and play in their archives. Fortunately they’ve anticipated this and there’s a video at the end with footage of the archive, the wallpaper printing machines in the factory and interviews with curator Mary Schoeser and top Sanderson designers.

If you have ambitious redecoration plans for your home after a trip to the Sanderson exhibition, pop along to the Sanderson showroom at the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour (a large shopping centre entirely devoted to glamorous designer furnishing shops) where you’ll find their latest collections and re-issued prints from the last 150 years.

Very Sanderson: 150 Years of English Decoration at the Fashion and Textile Museum 19 March – 13 June. £6.50 (£3.50 concessions). www.ftmlondon.org

We asked Katherine to tell us more about quilts in London:

What are you doing with Liberty this spring?
Liberty commissioned five new quilts from me for their exhibition Quilty Pleasures. They are also displaying the Action Man and Barbie quilts which I made 2007 after graduating. One of the quilts I’ve created is made from Liberty fabrics and clothing donated by the staff. The Liberty quilt will be auctioned on ebay to raise funds for the Variety Club charity.

Why did you start making quilts?
As a textile designer I’m concerned with our current throw-away culture. For me a quilt embodies the anti-throw-away. The sense of passed on skill and knowledge is a prominent aspect of my work and I run regular hand-sewing patchwork quilting workshops in London. I ask everyone to bring their own favorite textiles to work with and join in a discussion about the memories assosicated with these pieces.

Where are your favourite places to buy fabric in London?
I love to look in all the markets for bits of fabric. I also visit two textile recycling factories in London were I’ve built relationships that allow me to look through there, sorting piles for fabric off cuts or garments that will be suitable for my work.

What inspires you about London?
Finding new areas and new communities. When Bricolage had our pop-up shop in Brixton Market, I really enjoyed the vibrancy of the local community. Having many galleries and exhibitions on your door step is also an amazing source of research for a designer – I can’t wait to see the V&A Quilts!

The Quilty Pleasures exhibition at Liberty is only on until the 12 April, so get down there quick!