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:

Seascapes with Laura Edgar

 A few of us had a wonderful day on Saturday creating seascapes with Laura Edgar. She made it down from lovely Whitley Bay and while her husband disappeared for a couple of alcohol free Guinnesses and the football we all got stuck in to creating textile seascapes.

Laura brought us some gorgeous samples of her work (click on the link above), a small sample shown here: 

We started with our reference image and then laid out some basic areas - sky, sea, sand etc and tacked the fabric down. Laura came and spoke to each of us individually to help with decisions. Then it was time to start adding details with scraps of fabric, sheers and chiffons. Laura had bag fulls of bits for us to use ranging from lace to dyed bits and experiments involving synthetics and the gas hob! We went over the hand embroidery stitches to use to help blend our fabrics together and ways to add depth and movement to our creations.

It was a fantastic workshop and our thanks go to Laura for making it such an enjoyable day. We didn't get finished so watch this space for further updates. in the meantime here are our efforts in various stages.