Darn It!

Yesterday was an extra meeting for our branch of the Embroiderers' Guild - the original had to be cancelled in January due to the snow! As that is often the case, we usually have members leading the workshops. This time we had three workshops for members to choose from; Darn It, Scrunch, Paint and Stitch and finally, Altered Textiles.  I chose to do Darn It and we were presented with hessian potato sacks (by one of our farmer's wife members) and we used a variety of threads, wools, ribbons and strips of fabrics to create our own patterns - very relaxing. I plan to make it into another book cover (my current obsession).

The tutor's sample - a cushion.

Paint, Scrunch and Stitch was painting acrylic paint onto brown paper, when dry, applying it with bondaweb to felt or a suitable fabric, crumpling it up and applying gold wax or markel stick. covering with another layer of bondaweb and covering the whole thing with a chiffon scarf to change the colours. A background ready for stitch.

Altered Textiles was taking the most awful pieces of upholstery fabric (which is always donated to textile lovers by well-meaning people) and once again, painting with acrylic to alter, change, disguise the background ready for stitch.  Further photos can be seen on 
www.blackmorevaleembroiderersguild.blogspot.co.uk

Embroiderers' Guild South West Regional Day

Yesterday I attended the South West Regional day at Marlborough, hosted by the Marlborough and Kennet Valley branch.  Our branch, Blackmore Vale, travelled up by coach - 27 of us.  There were fantastic shopping opportunites: Silk Sacs, Mulberry Silks, Art Van Go, Margaret Beal and Tiggy Rawlings to name just a few - and of course, many purchases were made.  After the business side of the meeting - by the CEO, Terry Murphy, we were treated to a slide show and talk by Cas Holmes - interesting.  As there were over 400 of us, lunch (which was very tasty) was served in two sittings (more shopping). In the afternoon, the talk was by Patricia Goodwin, a extremely entertaining character. She spoke to us about her collection of outfits, gleaned from an old lady (legally bought) in a country manor house from between 1880 to the 1930's - fabulous! There was also a raffle - I won and then on the way home we had a branch raffle - I won again!! A totally fantastic day.  Now I'm away for a week sorting my late mother's house with my sister. See you all soon.

Glastonbury Abbey Ruins

A Workshop at West Country Embroiderers

I attended a workshop at Sherborne branch of the West Country Embroiderers this Monday just past with the amazing Llinos Spriggs in 'charge'. Llinos works mainly in abstract and likes to use the idea of colour themes for pieces.  She presented us all with bags of scrap fabric and asked us to think of a flower and collect colours around that flower.  At first I thought of an iris, but then she demonstrated the colour idea using that same flower as her example.  I settled for a paeony - not sure if the spelling is correct - not important.

The first stage - layering up the fabrics; cottons, sheers, satin effect, sparkling bits!

A little bit of hand stitching - kantha style.

Machine embroidery!

The finished 
item
a
hand
made
book! 

Setting Up Today

Have been spring cleaning the studio and now I'm ready to get going with some more textile work. I've been working on folded pocket wallets, book covers and coptic bookbinding this week. I'm looking forward to the Embroiderers' Guild outing this Saturday to Marlborough for the South West Regional Festival Day. Shopping, lunch and talks, including the lovely Cas Holmes. Got to walk the dog and do the chores and then ...... stitch! Toodlepip ;-)