Beyond Repair with Shelley Rhodes

 We had a lovely day with Shelley Rhodes today and a workshop called Beyond Repair. We were inspired by her gorgeous pieces of work and then we made a start. We gathered our bits of fabric and papers and attacked them... hole punched, awls, wire brushes , sandpaper, ripping and tearing; we were brave and set about previous pieces of work we weren't too impressed with and made holes and distressed everything. Next was adding paint and ink to hide and mask bits.

Here's our distressing in progress:

    

Then we arranged our distressed pieces, pinned bits, bonded and glued bits to hold them in place and then started adding stitch. We may then cut these pieces and continue the process. We had a great time and everyone went away with work to finish but also with ideas about how we might continue to fragment and repair those pieces until we finally have something we might consider finished. Everyone thought it was a really freeing process - highly recommended. Thanks Shelley.

Work in progress:

 

Dear Emma Designs

 Some of us had a fabulous day with Cathy from Dear Emma Designs today. We were making fabric bowls. Cathy brought in some of her stunning work as inspiration:

We had a bit of a practise at free machining first - fiddling with tension and speed!

I have to say the tables in the hall weren't great - bit too bouncy which made accuracy a challenge. Once we'd got our eye in we then cut our pieces for the main outer and lining of the bowl and then set to work with our designs:

Then it was bond-a-web to anchor our shapes followed by machining. We didn't manage to complete our bowls in the session but left with instructions and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. 

Photos of our efforts in various stages of completion.

Members not participating in the workshop were busy with their own projects: