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:

Deb Cooper Workshop

Wow, what a day we've had! Deb Cooper came and ran a workshop for us: Lines and Edges with some dyeing with rust and tea thrown in for good measure. Deb brought us some really lovely samples to inspire us and lots of bits and bobs to include in our strips. Scraps of fabric were applied to a backing strip and stitched with various fabrics and papers with a selection of stitches. We used neutral colours ready to dye later. As we were stitching Deb produced a lucky dip of little pieces of paper each with an instruction of something to include as we stitched - a new stitch, a named stitch, lace, a different fabric etc - just to keep us on our toes! We also used lolly sticks and bobbins. 

Deb's work:

And ours in progress:

Some of our strips or bundles of scraps were tea and rust dyed - tightly rolled to make 'spring rolls' and 'dimsum' - now their official name. We are waiting for our chinese starters to sit for a week and then dry before we see the results.