The Cottage Orné Quilt

The Cottage Orné Quilt
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Sunday 28 November 2010

A quilt for Vivienne

 I want to tell you about my friend and editor, Vivienne Wells, who was a Commissioning Editor at David & Charles (now part of Krause Publications).



Vivienne commissioned all the embroidery books by Thomasina Beck, which in my opinion was a highpoint in textile publishing.  She also discovered and helped many famous authors (too numerous mention) as well as commissioning books from both the Embroiderers' Guild and the Quilters' Guild. More importantly, she is  trustworthy, ethical and a steadfast friend and confidante to all her authors, as I know from personal experience.


Vivienne now has her own company Rainbow Disks which she began because she felt that mainstream publishers weren't catering for many things craft people were interested in.  She also wanted to pay her authors a fair return for all their work and have decent royalties.  Here is the link to her website -
                                             http://www.rainbowdisks.com/
do go and have a browse and bookmark it because there are lots of good books in the pipeline.

They are books, but they are on disk and the greatest advantage, apart from their relevance, is that the pictures in them are terrific and can be enlarged to enable you to study everything in the greatest detail.  How wonderful is this?  How many times have you been frustrated in not being able to see details properly and peering through a magnifying glass to work out something?  No need for this now! 

She is rare in another way - I have made her a quilt and I don't usually do this!  It is a simple construction which was quickly sewn after the much more lengthy fabric search and selection process then quite intensively quilted with Welsh motifs.

2 comments:

Karmen said...

How wonderful! I look forward to getting to know her company. You created a love piece of work to honor your friend. Karmen

Vivienne at Vivebooks said...

Mary I am very touched by this. Your friendship means just as much to me you know! Vivienne x