Celebrating Spontaneity in Creative Embroidery. I went to Broadlands Art Centre www.broadlandarts.co.uk for a weekend workshop with Gwen Hedley. This is the piece I produced in one day, admittedly with a lot of help from Gwen.

I love the way these pieces are created, it is impossible to predict the end result and Gwen is such a nice tutor, very helpful and encouraging. I worked very hard this weekend, but Gwen worked 11 times harder.

Broadlands is in rural Norfolk, a lovely part of the country, the studio is a Victorian school house, and Kit our host for the weekend worked wonders with the food and refreshments.

Work in Progress. Needs more machine embroidery and lots of embellishing.

FRACTURES

Took a workshop with Sandra E Middleton www.diverse-threads.co.uk yesterday. We started with a 6" square of silk velvet with bondaweb on the reverse. This was cut into lengths approx 1/4" wide and lay onto a piece of black cotton fabric 12" x 6" leaving black stripes. This was backed with bondaweb and cut into 1/4" strips, cutting in the opposite direction, ie at right angles, to the last ones. These strips were lay on dyed silk fabric.

The whole piece was then backed with bondaweb and the edges trimmed. A new piece of bondaweb was cut to the same size, then the piece of striped fabric with the layers was cut into lengths, cutting the opposite direction from last time. The strips were lay onto the bondaweb, slightly staggering each piece so that the squares were broken up. This was repeated several times until I ended up with the piece shown here. It takes a while to make a small piece and uses loads of bondaweb, however a little goes a long way. The tiny silk pieces glow where the light catches them.