Extrav-Organza!

May's workshop was a lovely stitching, slashing, burning day with Kathleen Laurel Sage!

Kathleen is well known for her floral organza designs, and also her innovative use of materials to create panels, bags, jewellery and 3D items.

Following a packed talk, illustrated with lots of examples and slides the previous evening, that led us through Kathleen's many-stage transition from hand embroidery to the design and development of her distinctive machine-embroidered floral work, we were treated to a fairly intensive day producing our own panels.  

While some people preferred to create their own designs, Kathleen's ready-prepared kits took away a lot of the uncertainty - and for some of us, time spent dithering!  The kits are beautifully assembled with all the materials, design, instructions, process diagram and reference photo, and enabled those using them to really focus on the stitching and creating, and to complete a panel during the day.

These lovely lacy designs use organza fabrics trapped between layers of dissolvable film, which are machine embroidered and then cut back, and finally cut out with a soldering iron.  The whole process gave us a thorough understanding of the techniques Kathleen uses and the confidence to apply them to our own designs.

Kathleen is a friendly, relaxed, helpful tutor.  She is also well organised and made sure we kept to a pretty strict timetable to ensure that we got through all the stages and had a super panel to take away at the end of the day.

"Extrav-Organza", Talk by Kathleen Laurel Sage

Kathleen Laurel Sage is a freelance textile artist, designer and enthusiastic embroiderer. Her inspirations are captured from carvings and ornate plaster work depicting patterns from nature and from the natural environment around her. Kathleen's fascination for working with organza fabrics has produced work ranging from conventional items through relief to exciting three-dimensional embroidered structures, such as floral vases, fashion accessories and unique jewellery.

In this friendly and relaxed talk, Kathleen outlines her transition from hand-worked embroidery in the form of stump work to machine-embroidered organza. She explains how she works and combines these techniques into dimensional and structural artworks.

Visitors are very welcome to come along to this talk on Friday 3rd July, which starts at 7.00 pm. We meet at St Mary's Church Hall, St Mary's Road, Leamington Spa - there is a map on our How to find us page.  Visitor charge: £5.00

There are also a couple of places available on the follow-up workshop on Saturday 4th July, in which we will make either small bead-like elements to form unique jewellery, or work a panel on a larger scale. If you are interested in this, please contact Jenny:
jennyarcher401@gmail.com.