Market Hall Decorations for the Abergavenny Food Festival

For the past 3 weeks , I have been crafting/sewing of a different kind. Every year for the past 15 years volunteers have made decorations to hang in the Market Hall for the now famous Abergavenny Food Festival. The absolutely wonderful Tina Reeves designs and oversees the production of the decorations using the Art's Alive building in Crickhowell. The work is done by an 'army' of volunteers with people popping in when they can. Tina manages to direct this team to produce the most wonderful decorations and keep her calm demeanour throughout, whilst up against a tight time schedule.
This year Tina chose the theme of pigs with ( very on trend) Matisse-like garlands to decorate the hall. So we all set to , to produce 1 Black Boar ( called Boris), 6 sows from a variety of pigs, including a British Lop, Gloucester Old Spot, Tamworth, Wild Boar, Sandy and Black, a Saddleback and 13 piglets.
 The decorations are the most amazing constructions made from what feels like smoke and mirrors! Firstly, a cardboard frame is constructed and given shape by stuffing it full of newspaper held in place with sellotape and the odd bit of chicken wire. Then, the pigs are covered with a layer of polyester wadding glued and sewn into place. Next a layer of stretchy jersey, which Tina has dyed, is sewn over the pig to look like skin. Then the ears, eyes, snout, teats, tails etc are added. Finally, the pigs were painted with spots etc to replicate the correct features for their particular breed.
This all sounds easy but in fact takes hours. Getting the 'skin' on was like pattern cutting on the hoof( ha , ha! but we did have Oliver who spent several days making the hooves out of plastic milk cartons and sticking them on).It took me a whole morning to sew the teats on one pig ( with lots of jokes about not making them too long because then they looked more like little boys!! ).
Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the painting process ( my least favourite bit because I'm way out of my comfort zone). The pigs and garlands are then suspended from the roof of the market hall, so indeed pigs can fly, given the right circumstances!

 

The sad thing is the decorations ( which really are community based) are now under threat as being too expensive, even though the work is nearly all done by volunteers who don't get paid except with a free entry ticket to the Food Festival.

This morning Mr Hare and I got up early as we had tickets for Radio 4's Saturday Live which was broadcast live from The Borough Theatre in Abergavenny and very entertaining it was too.

 

I'm hoping to get back to my usual sewing next week because I haven't achieved virtually anything in my FAL list for the third quarter.