Shiva Flowers Sandra Kendall September Meeting 2015

Our workshop on Shiva Flowers was led by one of our own members, Sandra Kendall, who brought with her a lot of samples and photographs of flowers that were useful to use with this method and can be seen in the pictures below.

 Sandra explained about taking the skin off the Shiva sticks, that the colours mix as in paint and the background colour also has an effect on the final colour.
We started off with a little warm up exercise by using a hand cut stencil of 3 shapes,attaching it to cloth by ironing, putting Shiva colour around the edges of the shape and transferring it to the cloth with a tooth brush.
Our members were then shown how to make a stencil of their chosen flower and apply the Shiva including adding stripes or different coloured centres.

  Before we did any stitching Sandra suggested we make any leaves from bondawebbed silk, cut out and attach by iron. She then went through a variety of ways of making stems to suit the flower.
Sandra then demonstrated machine stitching around the flower to make it "pop out". An alternative method was to backstich by hand around the edge.

 Once the edge had been sewn the flower could then be embellished by hand stitching and beading to make the centre of the flower stand out.

Most members had reached the point where they had started to add the leaves. The flowers were then taken home to finish off and to quilt the background.
The flowers were  varied in color, shape and size and we are looking forward to seeing the finished embroideries soon.
Thank you to Sandra for an enjoyable day.