Vinny Stapley's Scrap Bag Challenge

Vinny gave us an interesting, colourful, jam-packed and well illustrated talk about her textile career, which left us amazed at her productivity and with lots of enthusiasm for the challenge she set us. This was to doodle random lines on a sheet of paper, and then use it as the basis for a set of pieced scraps, which could be embellished in whatever way took our fancy.  It was an ideal project for using up some of our seemingly never-diminishing stash, and for inspiring a bit of creativity.

Vinny joined us for the show-and-tell session the following day, and gave us some useful feedback and encouragement.

Here are some photos of some of your beautiful pieces ....

Judi's photos show the process of design and assembly:

 

She says, "Each section has been free motion stitched, using a different style, which I am trying to echo with hand stitch on top, e.g. flowers, swirls, leaves and vermicelli, and couching on the thicker yarns."

Gill decided to use some silk pieces that she felt she had been holding on to for too long,  

"I hope to continue working on my piece with the intention of making it into a picture. I was inspired particularly by many of the other pieces shown at our super show and tell, by the use of couching on top and the movement others had got into their pieces with their sewn lines."

Carol's finished stitchery uses a different colour palette, with plenty of scope for deciding how to make it up:

Shay completed her panels, one with machine stitch and the other hand stitched.

Dorothy also went for hand stitch:

While Margherita's panels are mainly machine stitched with some hand stitch:

 

Elizabeth has made up her panels into a bag.  The sheep are needle felted and made from sheep's wool collected from a walk that morning, and the silver piece is a mylar balloon found in a hedge on the same walk. 

There are probably quite a few more works in progress to be shared, so don't hold back, ladies, we do love to see them.

To round off, Lucy has sent us a photo of her pencil case, made following Angie Hughes' workshop, and which she will be using for Young Stitchers: