Knit your own masterpiece

Thanks to Jenny Brown form Australia for sharing the low-down on this fantastic knitting group from South Shields in the North of England.

The Materialists are a group of knitters of  mixed abilities from complete beginners to professionals. Every Saturday morning they meet up at the Customs House in South Shields. The group got started in early 2009 (around about the same time as us!) with the Coat for a Boat project in which 350 knitters contributed to knitting a giant coat for a fishing boat, including sails, which was launched on the Tyne.


One of the group's recent projects is to recreate art masterpieces in knitting. Here are a couple of examples:

Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe

Munch's The Scream.

Inspirational sewing makeovers

MIAMI member Carol Seatory is a fantastic role model. She's put her sewing talents to everything from making small purses and little girls' dresses to  re-upholstering old chairs - and along the way has transformed her work as an illustrator  by working with scraps of fabrics to make fabulous collages.

Carol squirrels away remnants and unwanted scraps in her fabric stash and then finds all kinds of uses for them. Here's a little Welsh stool Carol has rescued and recovered in vintage fabric - itself "rescued".

Read Carol's story - including how when pregnant she just couldn't stop herself from sewing until she'd made over 40 little dresses - even though she knew she was expecting a baby boy! Read about Carol and see more examples of her work on our website

Rag Rug book offer

We recently ran a giveaway on the website for a book called Rag Rug Making - and it turns out a lot of you are keen to give rag rugs a try as it was one of our most successful competitions.

When we told the publishers, they decided to give our followers an exclusive offer of £3 off the book which we reviewed here.

To take advantage of the offer - ring the publishers on 01684 588599 and quote the code RAGMIAMI. Offer available until 29th April 2011.