Knitting courses in Bourne

gina-b silkworks

Gina-B Silkworks designs and produces a variety of craft kits, books, DVDs and other items with an emphasis on handwork & passementerie - decorative textile crafts. We also stock a range of tools & materials for these crafts. Gina also makes bespoke items to commission. "Traditional Crafts for the modern maker" About Gina - Gina Barrett has been making reconstructions of buttons, dress trimmings and other passementerie for museums and costumiers since 1999. Her work can be seen in a variety of museums, heritage sites & stately homes including the Royal Mews, the Royal Armouries, Historic Royal Palaces, The Victoria & Albert Museum, English Heritage, Chicago Museum of Art and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.  She provided buttons, ribbons and braid for an award-winning project at Perth Museum, and hundreds of buttons for the film “Sweeney Todd”. Her latest film work includes buttons for "Napoleon" and "Lee". She has created buttons & trimmings for various series including “The Crown”, “Becoming Elizabeth” , “A Stitch in Time”. She is the author of a number of books including Buttons, A Passementerie Workshop Manual, Dorset Ring Buttons, Thread Wrapped Buttons, Zwirnknopf Buttons and the Making Passementerie range of instructional DVDs. She appears on the Create & Craft channel with demonstrations of passementerie techniques, representing her company Gina-B Silkworks. Gina is the contributor for the Passementerie entry in the Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450-1450 (Brill). She has also co-authored Tak V Bowes Departed: A 15th Century Braiding Manual Examined and 6 booklets on medieval narrow wares, and regularly produces how-to articles for magazines, as well as papers and essays on other forms of passementerie. Gina has been involved in textile research projects with groups around the world, and is a founder member of Soper Lane, a group begun in 1999 to research the lives and work of the medieval London silkwomen.  Gina is a trained illustrator, with a background in historical and diagram illustration and graphic design. Her passion for textiles grew from studying historical costume for her illustrative work.

crafty mama

love jars

Preserving is something I have loved doing ever since I can remember – I have memories as a very small person helping my Mother to make jars of jam ready for the Winter. I could only just see over the kitchen table but loved all the neat rows with their cellophane tops and labels. I made my first chutney alone and unaided when I was about 11 years old - I don't know what my Mother was thinking of - but I was delighted with the result and embarked upon trying out more recipes over the next few years. Preserving has been a lifelong passion and I have enjoyed experimenting with creating my own recipes which is after all, the roots of preserving in the first place. Our ancestors used what they knew with what they had in order to extend the life of food that they farmed or foraged in order to feed their families, and to survive. Nowadays, preserving can be more of an enjoyable hobby but is still an important means of making the most of what we grow or harvest or maybe find as bargains at the market. It makes a significant contribution to the family diet by adding nourishment, variety, and flavour to everyday meals. Nowadays, when we are all trying to make ends meet it is even more important to make sure we make the most of all that we can and prevent waste. about rosie making jam age 5 I now live in rural Rutland with husband Trevor, love good food, chickens and knitting (when I'm not making jam!) With teaching jam and preserve making and Master Classes, talks and demonstrations, writing, running my own Artisan preserves business, LoveJars and being Nanny to four grandsons, life is busy. In addition there are books! 'In a Bit of a Jam' is my personal account of my jam making story which began before I went to school and is supplemented with a series of recipe books on the individual methods of making preserves - and is a work in progress. We also publish a monthly digital magazine 'Simply Preserved' for all of those who love preserving as much as we do, home makers and artisans alike. Free to read in page-turning software it is a ground breaking resource for the preserving world.