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:

 

Bobbin Along

 Sue C led a fabulous mini workshop called Bobbin Along - embroideries round bobbins. Sue brought some examples of the ones she has made and is currently working on Autumn as part of a four seasons set. We tackled Christmas - it's not that far off... We transferred words and sketched out designs on our fabric strips ready to embroider. What a lovely, therapeutic day of stitching; we've not quite finished but will bring our bobbins back at the December meeting to show everyone. Sue also brought a box of goodies so we could decorate the tops of the bobbins. Can't wait to see what everyone has done.

Sue's completed bobbins and our works in progress:

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.