Busy busy busy

 Hello all.

I hope this post finds you all well and hopefully dry.

I thought I'd start my post by sharing a photo with you that I took last Sunday of our local church, St Peters and the beautiful snowdrops. It really was a lovely day.

I've also had a great time with the Lutterworth Embroiderers Guild at a talk and then a workshop with Nicola Jarvis.  You may recollect I have attended a workshop with her previously.

You can see our group here, all working very diligently.  It was a very quiet class.

The photo below is what my piece should look like - after a lot more work.

I learnt and perfected some great stitches: long and short stitch, stem stitch, split stitch, laid work, trellis stitch, buttonhole, satin and Turkish Rug.  

Nicola was a great teacher - she spent the whole day demonstrating stitches and offering encouragement.

Nicola's talk was really interesting.  I had no idea that May Morris had written a book and it was still in print. 'Decorative Needlework'  was originally published in 1893.  

Nicola selected some great quotes from it.

Anyway I must get back to stitching as I think this one may take some time.

Classes

Hi all,

Hope you're well and enjoying this beautiful dry sunny day.

I've been to a couple a really good classes recently.

First was a class with Hilary Beattie at The Bramble Patch.  It isn't the type of class I would have normally picked, but I've seen her at a few events and knew I'd have a great time.  

So the class was painting stylised flowers.  And here are the results:

As you can see I've painted the flowers on both plain and lightly patterned fabric.  The aim is to combine this panel with other fabrics and painted elements.  I'll let you see how it progresses.

The next day I had a class with Ineke Berlyn with the Leamington Embroiderers Guild.  A great day.

So - in the Black Magic workshop I learnt how to use a discharge paste with Thermofax screens.This is activated by a steam iron.  Once this part is complete I used the same or similarly themed screens with metallic paints.  I think I may have overdone the first piece.

At the same time I tried the technique on calico.

This is half the piece before it has been machine embroidered.

And here is the second half of the piece with some machine embroidery work.  I'm going to add some hand stitching.

I'm pleased with how this is progressing.  It's been a great way to practice machine embroidery and see how using the different threads produce such different results. I think it might end up as a cushion.

I hope you're all well and I promise to show you how it progresses.