Hello and thank you for taking a look at our newsletter today. Each week we like to bring you something inspirational to brighten your day and hopefully fire your creative enthusiasm. I was fortunate enough to spend a few days in London last week and made a whistle stop tour of some of my favourite paintings, including a fleeting visit to the National Gallery. I could happily move in there on a permanent basis, but some of my family have less of an attention span for paintings!

I’m always drawn to the portraits, but don’t you find that often in a portrait, the hands are just as important as the face? I found myself photographing not only the faces but also how the artist had tackled the hands too.

There’s nothing nicer than a thoughtfully presented, handmade gift and with that in mind we hope you enjoy working along to paint your own patchwork inspired wooden gift box. The lucky recipient might be hard pressed to decide whether they like the gift, or the box best!

If you have a DesignMatters TV Membership you’ll find this workshop is automatically available to you, just click on the link above.

If you don’t have a Membership, you can purchase this workshop as a one-off for £1.50. You might like to use Classroom Credits to do this. As you know we are gradually phasing memberships out and a couple of months ago we introduced the Classroom Credit option. Many thanks to those of you who have already added credit to your accounts – we hope you find redeeming them against any of the new videos or any title in the Classrooms is really straightforward. And don’t forget, any purchased videos stay in your account for unlimited viewing!

It’s been a while since we updated you on what my sister Frances is up to. You might remember she makes and sells beautiful items under her brand Max & Rosie.

Just added to her online store are these fantastic girl’s dresses. Amelie has grown up wearing this particular style, we’ve both made them for her in every size from 18 months to now and so I can vouch for how wonderful they are!

Every dress is handmade by Frances in her studio in Cheltenham here in the UK and they’re stitched from beautiful quality fabrics including some of our very own digital prints like the fun cakes print in the pink dress above.

Amelie has worn and worn hers over the years and as she has outgrown them we’ve passed them down to other family members.

Please take a few minutes to browse the dresses, and the other items Frances has for sale. She puts such a lot of time and effort into the making of them, paying so much attention to detail and neatness, she honestly puts me to shame!

Are you familiar with this work? Perhaps you’ve seen it before.

If you don’t know it, at first glance perhaps you think it’s a fantastic quilt? But no! This is a painting by British artist David Bomberg and was done in 1913-14. Isn’t that fascinating? I’m pretty sure if you saw this piece in an art quilt book or magazine you’d happily accept that it’s a quilt made sometime in the last 20 years or so, but it’s a painting made over 100 years ago.

Why am I sharing this with you? Well, just because I think it’s always amusing that there are hardly any new ideas, and you can be pretty sure that someone, somewhere might have done something similar before.

But also because I love to reinforce the notion that as quilters we must never work with blinkers on, but always refer to the wider art world for reference and inspiration, and to constantly put our work in context.

I hope if this work is new to you, like it was to me, that you might enjoy finding out more about the piece and other of Bomberg’s paintings. You can see some great examples on the Tate website and an exhibition is just opening at the National Gallery called Young Bomberg and the Old Masters.

Thank you for reading our news this week. We will be back next week with more! In the meantime please follow along with us via social media (the links are below) and if you have any questions about anything please feel free to email.

Love Laura

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