Do you like textiles and fabric?

Of course you like textile and fabric!  That’s why you read this blog!

Are you going to be in Wellington on Sat the 19th of November?

If so, mark your calendars for Fabrications, an expo celebrating all things textile and fabric related.

And I’m going to be there doing something new and exciting.

I’ll be hosting a Antiques Roadshow type event, where you bring me a textile object of any type that you want to know more about, and for a gold coin I’ll tell you everything I know about the textile, except the valuation.

What, what’s that!?!  Isn’t that the whole Antiques Roadshow thing?  It’s all about what an object is worth?

Well, yes, kinda.

I don’t particularly like the value-focused approach to antiques in the first place, and it works particularly badly when applied to textiles, which are the most intimate form of antiques: worn on our bodies, carried with us, the mementoes of births and marriages, celebrations and survival.  What a textile is worth is so much more than a monetary value, and I like to focus on that.

So what kind of textiles can you bring?

Anything really:  old fabric with fun patterns, your grandmothers wedding dress, a scrap of mystery brocade, or a perfectly pristine embroidered apron.  I know a lot about a lot of textiles, and well, if I don’t know about yours you will have had the honour of having completely stumped me!

And of course I’ll bring some of my own textiles to have on display, and will be wearing a fabulous frock.