Beyond Repair Shelley Rhodes June Meeting 2017

This month we welcomed Shelley Rhodes who had come to inspire us with "Beyond Repair" loosely based on Japanese Boro work. 
She told us how she is fascinated with the life of a piece of cloth  with memories often contained within stains, tears and holes and how she tries to recreate some of this wear in her textiles.
Shelley set up a very attractive display of her work and another table with her sketchbooks samples and tools for us to borrow to distress our fabric/paper.

One of our group had brought some fabric which had been distressing on the line for 8 weeks and already contained holes tears and frayed edging!
We all started off by making holes, distressing paper and material using sharp implements, a wire-brush and a file! We then combined the two together to make some samples.

 

 After we had made  some samples we started to construct a piece of fabric made from distressed material and/or paper by attaching pieces with pins and moving them around until they were in a pleasing arrangement.

When we had arranged our pieces we started to stitch to integrate  the piece by matching colours and shapes on the piece.

Most of us got as far as starting the stitching and we took our pieces home to complete. It was a very enjoyable day and Shelley brought her own unique style  and creativity to the workshop. 

We took away with us a different way of working and looking at things which will help expand our own creative endeavours.

Thank you Shelley for a very enjoyable day.

A finished interpretation of "Beyond Repair"