Teabags aren't just for a cuppa.

 Today Jackie led us in a mini workshop on teabag landscapes. Jackie is a real whizz with her left over teabags and has shown us her beautiful work using them many times. Well, we got to join in today. She has been saving Yorkshire teabags (what else?!) for a while, drying and preparing them for us to use. She brought inlets of little bits and pieces to create our miniature landscapes - bits of scrim, plumbers scrim(?!), evenweave fabrics and florist's ribbon; we got to delve into her ort tin of lacy scraps. Once we had selected pieces for out background, middle and foreground we stitched them down and then added embroidery. Everyone loved the results and they were all different. Don't throw you teabags away, turn them into mini works of art!

Some of Jackie's lovely work: 

And our mini art works:

Data Visualisation in embroidery

 Jordan Cunliffe visited us today and gave a talk on data visualisation in embroidery. What on earth is that!? Fascinating is what it is! Jordan showed us her beautiful work, so simple in the tiny stitch but conveying detailed and complex ideas and information. The work records many aspects of her life that she has recorded such as marks for every day of her life and her husband's life and where they intersect represents their time together. She tracked her sleep over a week and each stitch represents a minute. Jordan made her own code to spell words in beads and similarly the words from a beloved childhood book were recreated in cross stitch - one stitch for each letter. Codifying information is another avenue she has explored; parts of teenage diaries represented in binary code using beads again. 

It was so interesting to see her work and think about different ways to convey time and meaning. Thanks Jordan!

Experimenting with Jennifer Collier

 Today we were joined by Jennifer Collier who brought us her workshop Experimental Textile techniques. We've had a lovely day playing!

There was lots to try out and all our samples are being made into beautiful books with laminated covers. We haven't quite finished them yet so there will be an update next month with the finished books and samples.

There was a lot of ironing involved - not the usual boring kind but with wax and plastics. We started with plastic bag samples, ironing bits together to create a new textile to stitch into. Next was trapping 3D items in a small waxed box and encasing them in paraffin wax. Third item of the morning was emptying teabags and trapping small bits of ephemeral in them then dripping melted wax on and ironing to seal them. We had plenty of time playing and making our samples.

Next up was ironing items in sandwich bags, turning them into lacy parcels followed by sellotape transfers and more teabags plus items with latex instead of wax.

The last three techniques were: making tissue paper and ephemera sandwiched and waxing them again producing lovely translucent goodies; trapping objects between two pieces of sheet fabric using bondaweb and finally paper roses.

So lots and lots to do and we all had a lovely pile of experiments to stick to pages of recycled papers which were turned into a book. We all found something we really loved and I'm sure some of our favourites will reappear in other pieces of work.

Our thanks to Jennifer who brought an enormous amount of stuff for us to use, it was a fabulous workshop.

Here's a flavour of what we got up to. I have to confess to forgetting to keep taking photos - too busy waxing stuff!