Collage Boxes with Anne Brooke

We've had a great day today making collage boxes with Anne Brooke!               Anne brought loads of examples to inspire us and her stash of wallpaper and bit and pieces.

First job was laying out our collages and then stitching the sides together to make the box net. Then some free machine embroidery; Carolyn did a brilliant job at her first attempt - her darning foot was still in the plastic bag! I think we have a convert.

Then Some had stitch and finally turning it into a box with a handmade cord. We didn't all get finished but everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. 

Here's todays efforts in various stages of completeness. Thanks Anne.

Deb Cooper Workshop

Wow, what a day we've had! Deb Cooper came and ran a workshop for us: Lines and Edges with some dyeing with rust and tea thrown in for good measure. Deb brought us some really lovely samples to inspire us and lots of bits and bobs to include in our strips. Scraps of fabric were applied to a backing strip and stitched with various fabrics and papers with a selection of stitches. We used neutral colours ready to dye later. As we were stitching Deb produced a lucky dip of little pieces of paper each with an instruction of something to include as we stitched - a new stitch, a named stitch, lace, a different fabric etc - just to keep us on our toes! We also used lolly sticks and bobbins. 

Deb's work:

And ours in progress:

Some of our strips or bundles of scraps were tea and rust dyed - tightly rolled to make 'spring rolls' and 'dimsum' - now their official name. We are waiting for our chinese starters to sit for a week and then dry before we see the results. 

Sea and Stone with Rachael Singleton

 In today's meeting we had Rachael Singleton with us who ran her Sea and Stones workshop, and what a fabulous day we had. Plenty of oohs and ahas when Rachael was demonstrating potato printing pebbles as we all reverted to our childhood! We had a practice on paper - much needed as potato pebbles aren't quite as straightforward as you might imagine. We had really interesting colour blends in shades of grey with rust, green and yellowy additions for variety. We carved into some of the spuds to produce the lines found on pebbles. When we had graduated onto printing on muslin and the pieces had dried we moved onto embroidering them. Textured threads created moss and seed stitches added shading and more textures; we left with our pebble stacks to finish at home but works in progress are below. Many thanks to Rachael for a thoroughly enjoyable day.