British Museum - Day of the Dead arrives in London!

Altar preparations underway at the British Museum (c)

I've been tweeting on few of the Dia de los Muertos events I've heard are happening in London this weekend, but thought I would put a few more details down here. The first and the biggy as far as I can see here in London seems to be the British Museum's Day of the Dead on Sunday, 1 November. The event looks like it's going to be a really fantastic day out. I have been really impressed by their website where you can watch videos to find out how sugar skulls are made and visit the workshop of the Linares family who are renowned for their papier mache folk art and have created the wonderful Moctezuma figure which will be featured at the event. You can join in by posting your own Day of the Dead pics on either their Facebook group or Flickr. There's a live Twitter feed using the hashtag #DOTD09 - for a whole few minutes my Twitter ID @VidaMuerte was sitting on their webpage! Cool or what? You can download their events programme here but in brief, the event opens 11am through to 5pm with Carnival Parades at 1.30pm and 4.30pm. I'm going along with some friends and hoping to bump into Hector and his family, plus a few other fellow Twitter folk that are going. Can't wait! I will be adding more events shortly, watch this space!



Me! @VidaMuerte, on the British Museum's website, whatever next?!!



Click above to visit the BM's fab Day of the Dead event pages!

All images (c) British Museum www.britishmuseum.org

Flora de los Muertos, a rare find from Alexander Henry

After much pondering, I have decided to put up for sale, the last few yards of Florade los Muertos, an out of print fabric from Alexander Henry's 2004 Folkloric range. I managed to get about 14 yards of this a couple of years ago from a US fabric seller, of course that was when the dollar was weak, so it still made sense to be able to buy for resale then. I had plans for these last few yards, but it occurs to me that since I don't own a sewing machine and can barely cut in a straight line, there are probably others more worthy of owning a precious fat quarter or two of this wonderful dreamlike mix of day of the dead and papel picado design. For those who find it, enjoy!

I adore AH's Folkloric fabric range, and am sad to see the passing of some fantastic prints, I hope one day they will make a return to print, we can but hope!

Loteria, this was the funkiest fabric ever, and I kick myself whenever I remember I never kept any back for myself! It was available with black, natural or tea backgrounds.

Cabeza's, this one was available in black, white, red and turquoise backgrounds



Star Signs - I managed to get about 10 panels of one full repeat of this wondrous fabric, it came about 24" x 24", perfect for one-off projects!

A missed opportunity for some fun with snow skulls

As the last of the snow melts away from my garden I realise I missed a great opportunity to experiment with my sugar skull moulds and create a mini mountain of Snow skulls although I did hear word that snow might be returning for the weekend...