Sasha's Bears

A Bear family

22-29 June 2012

I was very happy to be invited to take part in this year's Reading Arts Week. It was in fact eight days of art-related events across town.

Two of my Teddies (Adrian and Frederick) were exhibited alongside other artists' works at Reading's Penta Hotel for three days.

There were also art fairs on Market Square on Wednesday and in the beautiful grounds of Caversham Court on Friday. I had stalls with my Teddies and hats at both of these.

Barry was adopted at Market Square in rather unusual circumstances. Much to his surprise and mine, he was chosen as a romantic messenger presented incognito to a fellow artist.

Adrian and Frederick at Reading Arts Week show

Me and my stall at the Market Square Fair

All in all, I made many new friends during the week, which is always nice. Weatherwise, the highlight was definitely the Caversham Court fair: the wind was so strong that the hats kept flying away :)

25 June

What with one thing and another, I have not made any traditional teddies for months. And it turns out that they are like buses: you wait a long time and then three come along at once! Well, almost at once. A week ago, I made one to order. Although we called him Bruce, he has since assumed an alias which I am not at liberty to disclose.

And now I have completed two other Teddies started some time ago. So please welcome Margaret the old-fashioned lady bear and Trevor the country squire.

21 June

This year, I once again went to Ascot on Ladies' Day. We were showing the collection of hats we had made specially for the occasion at Adrienne Henry Millinery.

This year's theme was Music, done in the classic Ascot colours: black and white.

The hat featuring a keyboard proved the most popular: it was photographed by all and sundry.

We had lots of fun together, and even the weather was not too bad.

For the first time in my life I even won something when I bet on a horse (don't ask me what its name was - I honestly don't remember).

14 June

It very much looks as though summer has been cancelled this year - at least here in Reading :)

I therefore decided not to lose any time and to grab this opportunity to indulge in my favourite hat style, that is, making cloches.

I hope you will enjoy looking at them at least half as much as I enjoyed making them.

16 May

For a few months now, my good friend Natasha and I have been making lampshades.

The original inspiration came form vintage Japanese fabrics from real kimonos. The patterns on them are so beautiful and delicate that as soon as we saw them we knew we had to make some use of them. And lampshades seemed to us the right thing to capture our own feelings about all things Japanese: mysterious and alluring.
Once we started, we had another nice surprise: the patterns seemed to change ever so slightly when the fabric was put on the wire frame, and then again, in a mysterious way, when you turned on the light.

I am now happy to introduce some of our work.

14 April 2012

I am still heavily involved in the British Alpaca project. Over the last few weeks, I have made several Teddies from alpaca fabrics. You will be surprised at the variety of fabrics made from or with alpaca wool! It all depends on what, if anything, is added to the wool when weaving it.

For my Teddies, I used both traditional alpaca mohair and pencil-stripe woolen fabric. Some teddies were made entirely of the latter - these were the red-eyed twins Ainsley and Brinsley; in others (Albert and Brian) pencil stripes were only used for the inserts in their ear and on their paws.

Ainsley and Brinsley (on chairs), Al Packers and others

I made all sorts of other things from alpaca wool too: hair clips, hair bands, toy teddies and, of course, alpaca-stuffed Wacky Bunnies. I also decorated children's straw hats. It may not be obvious from the photos, but no too hats are the same!

So today I took all my alpaca stuff to the wonderful Animal Farm Weekend at Wellington Country Park. Here you can see me with some other members of the "Alpaca Ladies' Mafia" at the event.