Three of our members attended the workshop on Lichens and Encrustations at the Storey which was taken by another of our members Sandra Kendall. Sandra brought along a range of samples using the same motif but varying the size and colour and worked on different backgrounds as shown below.
We all looked at the colours, shapes and textures of lichens and decided that they were just asking to be stitched with stitches that give raised textures e.g.french knots, woven wheels, pistil stitch and many others.
The basic lichen was worked by applying fibres to hand dyed cotton and then embroidered over the top and finished with the addition of beads.
Some of the ladies then started embroidering onto muslin with textural stitches and making a smaller lichen supported on felt which would then be applied to a background at a later stage.
At the end of the afternoon we had covered a range of work as you can see in the picture below. A big thank you goes to the ladies for working so hard on a very hot day!
Five of our members travelled to Lancaster to take part in a darning workshop with Pat Barrett at the Storey, Lancaster, as part of the activities surrounding the Tied by Stitch Exhibition.
Darning does not do justice to what Pat does with darning as a colourful and textural embroidery stitch. See elephant below
Pat showed us some delightful pictures which we might like to use for inspiration and her enthusiasm was very infectious when it came to her "darning" and "threads".
To get started we made a sketch on our background material of our ideas.
Then Pat demonstrated how to lay the warp thread in small patches on our quick sketches and then weave the weft thread through them varying colours and shades.
The technique was very addictive and I think it will not be long before all of these are finished!
All thanks go to Pat for a most enjoyable day and introducing us to using darning as a creative embroidery stitch.
This month we were lucky to have Priscilla Jones take our June workshop. Whenever we think of Priscilla we think of tea cups and saucers imbibed with her own delicate charm. She is now moving on to working in porcelain with found pieces of interest. Some of her pieces are below.
We were going to make either a 2D or 3D structure with wire. Priscilla showed us how to twist the wire and squeeze the twists with pliers. As soon as we had decided what to make we set about twisting our wire into the shapes we wanted, which was not as easy as Priscilla made it look!
We then cut up fine material such as silk or chiffon and applied it to the structure with hot wax which gave a delicate translucent effect.
We were then able to stitch into the structure and sew on buttons beads etc..
Most of us either finished or nearly finished our structures and we took our efforts home proudly. All thanks go to Priscilla for such a fun and enjoyable day.
