Lichens and Encrustations Sandra Kendall January Meeting 2016

This month's workshop on Lichens and Encrustations was taken by Sandra Kendall one of our own members.
She brought and displayed photographs of lichens and work inspired by them, which you can see in the pictures below.

Sandra told us a little bit about lichens and because they were small they could easily be missed but once seen they were everywhere! Looking at the photographs we could see that they were just asking to be embroidered in textural stitches!

Sandra then demonstrated how to make a basic lichen by using wool fibres attached to a background and then stitched around with fly stitch, pistil stitch bullion and french knots. The centre could then be densely embroidered with french knots and beads.

For members who wished to take their lichens a bit further we were shown how the basic lichen could be embroidered much smaller onto a piece of commercial felt and then either attached to a handmade felt background or hand made bark like background. 

 Another method Sandra suggested was to attach the lichen to a piece of muslin and then heavily embroider around it and then attach to either a background or felt pebble.

 Members enjoyed their day and it is always interesting to see the wide range of results from a single starting point. The colours used were beautiful and some of them were not our usual favourites.
Thank you Sandra for a good day.