Lichens and Encrustations, The Storey, Lancaster Sandra Kendall

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!