Corinne Young: A Stitched Garden

 This afternoon we had Corinne Young visit us (click on the link for her website) to give us a talk about her textile journey and what fascinating journey it has been. There are lots of interesting articles on her website from various magazines and some fabulous pictures, but here's a quick summary of our afternoon.

Corinne started with studies at the RHS Lindley library and the Economic Botany collection at Kew producing work based on seed heads and botanical specimens using flax fibre to make paper for a background.

Following an exhibition at the Society of Designer Craftsmen she was approached by one of the producers of the Lord of the Rings theatre production and was commissioned to make sixteen panels. These were first exhibited in Toronto and then moved to the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Photo from Corinne's website

A commission for Burton Constable Hall was based on the theme of the passage of time where art work was displayed amongst existing antique pieces.

Photo from Corinne's website

Corinne now works on 3D pieces - machine embroidered flat, cut out and stiffened to turn onto amazingly realistic flowers and plants. 

Photo from Corinne's website

Corinne has exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show numerous times and I'm sure people must think her plants are real!

We had a lovely afternoon looking at Corinne's work and listening to her journey in stitch.

I snapped some photos of the work she brought but I'm afraid they don't do it justice.

We had a stitch morning before Corinne's talk and as usual there was a lot of lovely varied work by our members. We were particularly taken with Clare's pasty - a needle case in fact, which was a really clever idea.

Not a Cornish pasty

Cute!

Bee-utiful (apologies!)

Can you spot Serena's hidden message?

Eco dyeing

 Today we had a great talk from Diane Morgan about her adventures with eco-dyeing. Diane lives in Brittany and also brought lots of lovely French textiles for us too. She give us lots of really interesting and useful information about her process, from scouring and mordanting fabric to the the placement of leaves and botanicals; she also explained the use of an 'iron blanket'. To top it all shelf us with detailed instructions so we can all have a go.

Not content with dyeing her fabrics she also makes some beautiful books and labels with dyed paper. Claire and Sue did a turn on the catwalk with some clothes that had been dyed. Diane made a lovely cushion for us to raffle too, so we had a really enjoyable morning.

And of course there was the usual stitching

Sue had been on an Anne Brooke course

Stitching leaves!

There's an interesting article in The Guardian about stitching into leaves. You can read it here. Isn't this just beautiful!

The artist is Hillary Walters Fayle; follow the link and have a look at her work.