Summer School July 2013

It was a beautiful sunny day as we set off for Summer School and remained so for the whole weekend.
This year only two of our members attended  and we both chose the embroidered book making workshop with Isabel Hall.
Isabel showed us a range of beautifully decorated and embroidered books and told us we would be making two books with embroidered spines, a book with Japanese binding and a silk paper/book.

Members busy with their books

Isabel showed us how to make our cover by using encaustic wax, coloured inks and mod podge to highlight the uneven texture of the hand made paper. We added colour on colour until we had the result we wanted.

A few of the covers in progress

While our covers were drying Isabel demonstrated making the pages and the stitching of the spine over tape.

We were then shown how to embellish and decorate our covers with embroidery, beads, cut outs and casting moulds. The rest was up to us!

Some books were finished but quite a lot were taken home to complete

Sik Paper was demonstrated wih possible ways of embellishment and incorporating items e.g. petals. Some of us turned our paper into little books.

Silk paper book on top

We then made a small book with Japanese stitched binding.

On the Sunday we had a look at what the other groups had been doing.
Pat Barrett had led her workshop on a kind of darning which was akin to weaving and you can see some of the brightly coloured samples below which are reminiscent of folk art.

The other group was led by Amy Senogles and was a specific kind of recycling using older partly finished embroideries and incorporating them into possible clothes parts. [See below]

As usual it was a very enjoyable Summer School,  we all learnt a great deal and enjoyed the company of like minded people and of course the food!