Angie Hughes' Exploring Velvet workshop

Angie never disappoints, and both her talk on Friday and 'Exploring Velvet' workshop on Saturday gave us stacks of inspiration to get going on our own textile creations.

In her 'Creative Icebreaking' talk, Angie suggested a range of useful ideas and techniques for getting started on a project, from using reference books for inspiration to going on a workshop!  In Saturday's workshop we used amazingly straightforward (but needless to say, expertly developed) paint, ink and bleaching techniques to create stunning backgrounds on which to add further embellishment and stitch.  Naturally, these were based on Angie's own work, which has strong influences from nature and from artists such as Klimt, but they are also techniques that we can develop in future work.

Angie was very generous with her time, skills and expertise (and her hysterical anecdotes), keeping things relaxed and checking that we were all getting on OK - which meant we all had a lot of fun.  Towards the end of a productive day we were let loose on the glitter(!!!), sequins, sweetie foils and other shiny bits and pieces - ahhh the indulgence!  Our pieces are now ready for the final stage of adding stitch and any other embellishments needed, and perhaps we'll see one or two pieces in our forthcoming 50th Anniversary exhibition …..



Here are pictures of some of the velvet pieces in development:

This is the same piece as the one above under a layer of organza, added to facilitate stitching, 

and which can then be cut away in unstitched areas:

 All have now gone home to be stitched and finished …..