A Valentine from Aitor Saraiba

Our dear friend Aitor Saraiba has been visiting from Spain this week! It’s always such a treat to see him and watch his amazing creativity unfold, and this week was especially wonderful as he brought some incredible goodies — including a really gorgeous giveaway!

Aitor’s multidisciplinary work blends traditional craftsmanship with contemporary art, resulting in profoundly emotional pieces that tell vibrant stories. We’ve totally adored the workshops he has run at Loop in the past as well as his many other beauties like stitching kits, Cohana collaboration Pokeori Kits, and so much more. On this visit, Aitor updated Loop’s window with some Valentine’s Day love and left us some incredible kits to share with you all.

Like the kits we’ve had from Aitor before, the brand new Alice in Wonderland Kit, Full Love Snippet Kit, and Hearts Kit give you the tools to tell a story of your own in stitch. The Alice in Wonderland Kit explores the whimsical world created by Lewis Carroll with fabrics illustrated with images and other motifs from the story. The Full Love Snippet Kit is a colourful blast, with a bright roll of fabric to stitch on plus a charm and Aitor Saraiba illustrations to stitch on. The Hearts Kit looks at the iconic emblem of love in all its guises. Needles are not included, but we have plenty to choose from if you need to stock up. These kits are your gateway to creativity!

The Alice in Wonderland Kit and Full Love Snippet Kit are available to buy now. As a way to say “thank you for stitching along,” Aitor will give the first 25 people to purchase each of these kits a signed drawing! This is such a lovely gesture from Aitor, and a great example of what a kind person he is, in addition to being a great artist.

Speaking of how lovely and generous Aitor is, the Hearts Kits are only available as a special gift! We’ll be giving away five kits on the blog and five kits on Instagram at @looplondonloves. To enter on Instagram, make sure you’re following both Loop and Aitor (@looplondonloves and @aitorsaraiba), “like” our post about the giveaway, and then comment on the same giveaway post saying which other Aitor project you love most, whether it’s a workshop he has hosted at Loop, another kit, or anything else! On the blog, make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter (you can sign up in the righthand column on this page) and then leave a comment below about your favourite Aitor project other than this one. Entries on both platforms will close Thursday the 12th of February at noon UK time and we’ll announce winners next Friday. Good luck!

If you can’t get enough of Aitor’s work, he has also hand-crafted some incredible Ceramic Tiles that we’re honoured to have at Loop. Each one depicts a unique, whimsical character in Aitor’s signature style. These are true beauties!

There’s more to get excited about from Aitor this year. During the week of the 18th to the 24th of May, he and the Japanese artist Tomomi Mimura (aka Mimstermade, whose work you can see at Loop and on Instagram) are going to visit Loop for a week-long residency! This is going to be a gorgeous celebration of creativity and collaboration. The pair will kick off the week by painting a new window for Loop on the 18th, host joint and individual classes throughout the week, and be in the shop for a meet & greet on the 22nd of May (pencil this in now and we’ll share more details soon!)

One of Tomomi and Aitor’s joint classes will be an Embroidered Bear Workshop, which will explore a dreamy joint project between the two of them, combining Tomomi’s unique mosaic-style darning embroidery with Aitor’s intuitive and expressive approach to fabric and stitching. It’s seriously a match made in stitching heaven!

Other workshops during the week will include Aitor’s Diary of Calm Workshop and Tomomi’s workshop for the original Mimstermade Rabbit. We’ll have dates and details soon for these and more workshops and events during their residency. Tomomi’s books on stitching will also be back in the shop soon. Stay tuned for more details!

100 Vibrant Granny Squares

If you’re looking to shake up your granny square game, you can’t go wrong with the book 100 Vibrant Granny Squares! With loads of unique patterns across 9-inch and 12-inch sizes, this is the perfect book to help expand your crochet vocabulary and start making some seriously incredible garments and accessories. Whether you prefer to learn from diagrams or textual explanations, the clear instructions here won’t let you down!

xoxo