E needed a waistcoat for Victorian day at school, I didn't have the fabric, didn't have a pattern and didn't have him to measure. Found some white wool and dyed it grey, had his mum send me his chest measurement and guessed the rest. I think it doesn't look too bad, kind of mucky and grungy, just the effect I was after. Most importantly, E liked it. He also liked wearing his grand-dads flat cap!

My favorite boy in all the world sent this, he is an artist in waiting.

Workshop with Pam Watts

One Day Workshop with Pam Watts, using cold water disolvables. Sleaford Embroiderers meet at the Hub in Sleaford and we have some excellent tutors come to teach us. We meet once a month and have tutors approx 5 times a year.


Pam is a lovely tutor, with a merry sense of humour so any workshop with her is a pleasure. This was no exception and although we all worked really hard, we laughed a lot too.

I was doing my health and safety expert impression and managed to stab myself with the sewing machine needle. That will teach me to wave my arms around willy nilly. Of course I was using a microtex extra sharp needle and to my embarrasment I managed to bleed on the lady-sat-next-to-me's disolvable fabric.

I free machined a leaf shape. Wet the disolvable and dripped silk paint onto it. When it dried I had these pieces. Hard to see in the picture but they are a little 3 dimensional with the ends of the leaves curling up from the paper.

Some of my leaves are the 'wrong' colour and look a bit dodgy but if I turn them upside down and add a little face and a halo I will have some very nice little angels!

After lunch we chopped up some scraps of fabric and placed them between two layers of disolvable and using a hoop, free machined. When I disolved this I draped it over a jam jar and left it to dry.

I like the rough edges and the scraps of shiny fabric, not to everyone's taste. Maybe next I will make one with tidy edges and some nice lace. Maybe.

Workshop with Janet Edmonds

Weekend Workshop at Broadlands Art Centre with Janet Edmonds. Brian and Katydog came with me. We stayed at the Wayford Bridge Hotel in Stalham, which has a great restaurant and allows one very well behaved dog to stay. During th day Brian and Katy went off walking on the Norfolk Broads whilst I beavered away at the workshop.

On Day one we studied and sketched a 3d object, then made a wire frame and wrapped it with various heat distortable fabrics. Mine was a complicated shape and I haven't started to wrap it yet. Typical of me!

Anyway day 2 was using wire frames to weave the distortable fabrics and fibres and I chose a base of garden mesh.

I painted tyvek cloth with silk paints and cut it into strips and wove it through the mesh. Then wove shiny polyester strips and bunches of rayon threads. I made some 'eggs' from tyvek, stuffed those with cotton chenille and pushed them through the mesh. I couldn't wait to zap so there are some zapped bits even though it isn't finished.

The tyvek distorts and shrivels up except where it is held into place by the wire.

Then it goes holey and my chenille fibres popped through the holes. I added some beads threaded on wire as I just like beads.

There will be more beads added when the weaving is done and the distorting finished. I plan to seed bead and add a few hand stitches too.

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.