"Stitch Draw" workshop

The evening before our workshop, Rosie James gave us a fascinating talk - illustrated with lots of photos and beautiful samples - on her progress from print specialist, through drawing and stitch, photography and screen printing, and the influences of painting and sculpture, to her current focus on stitched drawing.  (See post below, 29 May.)  You may have seen Rosie's striking hangings at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC, among other venues.

The workshop started with some relatively simple exercises, all done with black thread on white fabric, and leaving long tails of thread hanging on the surface.

We progressed through further exercises, which included stitching an image traced onto tissue paper:

stitching figures drawn directly onto transparent fabric - see right-hand figure in the photo below:  

(It could be quite tricky to follow the drawn lines when looking through the fabric!)

and images built up with appliquéd coloured fabric:

It was a challenging, interesting and very enjoyable day, and Rosie was a generous and very supportive tutor.  We certainly didn't waste any time, and came away with some great samples.

➢ Perhaps we will be seeing a few examples of this technique on some stitched cards for our Greeting Cards exhibition at Leamington Library (31 July - 13 August)  .....