Beyond Repair Shelley Rhodes June Meeting 2017

This month we welcomed Shelley Rhodes who had come to inspire us with "Beyond Repair" loosely based on Japanese Boro work. 
She told us how she is fascinated with the life of a piece of cloth  with memories often contained within stains, tears and holes and how she tries to recreate some of this wear in her textiles.
Shelley set up a very attractive display of her work and another table with her sketchbooks samples and tools for us to borrow to distress our fabric/paper.

One of our group had brought some fabric which had been distressing on the line for 8 weeks and already contained holes tears and frayed edging!
We all started off by making holes, distressing paper and material using sharp implements, a wire-brush and a file! We then combined the two together to make some samples.

 

 After we had made  some samples we started to construct a piece of fabric made from distressed material and/or paper by attaching pieces with pins and moving them around until they were in a pleasing arrangement.

When we had arranged our pieces we started to stitch to integrate  the piece by matching colours and shapes on the piece.

Most of us got as far as starting the stitching and we took our pieces home to complete. It was a very enjoyable day and Shelley brought her own unique style  and creativity to the workshop. 

We took away with us a different way of working and looking at things which will help expand our own creative endeavours.

Thank you Shelley for a very enjoyable day.

A finished interpretation of "Beyond Repair"

Summer School June 2017

I drove to Clitheroe on Friday afternoon to join all the other members of the Embroiderers' Guild who were gathering at Waddow Hall, Lancashire, near Clitheroe, for a weekend of stitching and good food in the Lancashire countryside.
The tutors this year were Nicola Jervis, known for her modern take on crewel work and Kim Thittichai known for her hot textiles.
I was joining Kim,s group where we were going to try out a new non woven fabric Paint 'n' Bond which was really sheets of glue.

Kim showed us some of her pieces using Paint 'n' Bond which you can see below

We all set about painting and printing onto our Paint 'n Bond and once it had dried we ironed it onto cotton material or painted newsprint to produce some amazing patterns and designs.

We then added puff paint, embossing powder,coloured foil and stitch. We then ironed the Paint 'n' Bond to sheers.

We all took our samples home with a few more metres of Paint 'n Bond to play with at home and see what else we could do with it.

The other group was led by Nicola Jervis who has developed birds and a squirrel in a modern crewel work technique see below

The group chose which bird or squirrel they wished to embroider and then Nicola demonstrated the various stitches one at a time so they had covered all the stitches by the end of the weekend.

By the end of the weekend, the second group still had a lot of stitching to complete as they were working with fine threads and small patterns but I am sure they will all be finished over the next few months.
Summer School was as enjoyable as usual with great ideas, good food, good company and beautiful surroundings.