North Devon and Alison Holt

There is a danger that this post will become photo heavy but if you can cope, I suggest you continue as there are some delicious embroideries to be seen. Last week my friend Maria and I travelled up to the north Devon coast for four days to attend a three day free machine embroidery course with Alison Holt http://www.alisonholt.com/

This course was arranged by the Barnstaple group of the West Country Embroiderers. We had plenty of space and good lighting in a really lovely village Methodist church.

Maria and I spent the first day wandering around the shops in Barnstaple and found the most amazing sewing/craft shop which just seemed to go on and on, but the best part was that the prices were just such good value. We hit the charity shops and found some good sewing bargains, stopped at a Fair Trade shop and bought some wonderful indian wood blocks and finished up at the famous Barnstaple Pannier Market - fascinating and a really good craft stall. This trip was fuelled with a lovely lunch at The Gallery Cafe, part of the Barnstaple Theatre.

Onward to our Bed and Breakfast at Lower Yelland Farm, http://www.loweryellandfarm.co.uk/index.html   Such a friendly host and on arrival we had the surprise that we had both been upgraded to a double room each - bliss, loads of space. Everything was clean and bright and breakfasts were great, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. Our fellow guests were very friendly and chatty and we met a super couple from Sweden and trying to explain machine embroidery to them both was quite amusing.

Well on to the course; Alison Holt is a wonderful person, talented embroiderer and such a patient and clear tutor. She explains everything so well and her pointers on colour theory are the best I've ever encountered. 

We selected our photos, traced onto silk, outlined with gutta, painted with silk paints and then stitched. Our theme, Rivers and Waterfalls - photos follow:

Whilst we were away, the weather was absolutely wonderful - warm, sunny and dry, the only downside being the sea mist that crept in with the tides. As the course finished at 4 each afternoon, we had plenty of time to explore and eat ice cream!!

 And every day was finished off perfectly with a lovely meal out and then back to base for a glass of wine and some more stitching on our crazy patchwork together.

Yesterday is but today's memory 

and tomorrow is today's dream

Khalil Gibran 

Revise, Refresh, Revive

My friend, Maria, and I have set up a Facebook Group which we have called Revise, Refresh, Revive and we are using it to work through certain books that we both have with the idea of creating pieces that will remind us of some of the more simple techniques. We have both found that it is quite an excellent way of reviewing and refreshing ourselves and our work. Our projects at the moment are from the Machine Embroidery Workbook, produced for the Embroiderers' Guild by Maggie Grey and Val Campbell-Harding in 1998. Chapter One encourages the user to remind themselves about the importance of cleaning the sewing machine - something we are all guilty of ignoring due to our eagerness to start the next project, the use the correct size needle and thread for each piece too, to get the best results.

Chapter Two takes the embroiderer onto projects and the first are so simple, but when approached again with a different view, produce some exciting pieces. It suggests that fabric shapes are cut from various toning fabrics, with bondaweb applied to the back of each and then machine stitched to a background with just rows of straight stitch. 

The second project is similar but calls for a change of shape and the use of utility stitches on the machine. It also suggest that the thread colour and type is changed, shiny and matt.

I've used a brown cotton and a red rayon thread on this, with two different zig-zag patterns used and it's very interesting how it changes the colour effect of the fabrics used. Why not give it a try and join us on Facebook.