Summer School with Chris Gray

We had a brilliant two-day summer school with Chris Gray last week-end, held in the lovely rural setting of Leek Wootton deep in Warwickshire countryside.  Chris gave us two days of expert and entertaining tuition on stamping and stitching, along with lots of tips and anecdotes, to make unique folded books on a theme of our choice, which - if they turn out anything like Chris's own - will become beautiful keepsakes.  

Chris brought everything we needed, from a wide range of wooden stamps, stencils and paints to her vast stash of hand-dyed fabric, beads, sequins, threads and wools.  We spent a happy and very busy couple of days creating patterns, motifs, re-arranging layouts and then stitching and embellishing.  All works to be completed at home, of course, but we felt we’d had a really indulgent and satisfying time. 

Decisions, decisions, which motifs to use?

Deciding on the layout

Preparing to stitch

The fun part is selecting the threads and embellishments

A very varied collection of themes shaping up

Chris is a generous and very helpful tutor, and she has been kind enough to put a very complimentary post about us on her blog, with some photos of work in progress:

I had a wonderful time with the lovely ladies!

 They did some absolutely stunning work...

 ...and I've blogged it this morning...

 ...copied to Facebook page as well.

Chris

Textile Butterfly - Lovely-Leamington

Judith Lovatt: 'What If?' talk and 'Compose and Distort Dayschool, 1 -2 November 2013

What a coincidence that Judith Lovatt came to talk to the Branch on Friday 1st November as both the feast of Diwali and Guy Fawkes were being celebrated!  As the fireworks were going off outside, she used the word “explosion” as she demonstrated ways of pushing the boundaries of drawing, design and embroidery in our work. 

The work shop on Saturday 2nd was fun and experiential. We were all working at various levels and Judith coped with all our diversities. She also gave us time to talk about our emerging samples of work with each other, which proved to be another learning experience.  See some examples of these below.

Judith is an excellent tutor and ran a very comfortable workshop.


Trial prints on fabric, using paints, inks, crayons and various techniques to create surface texture:

Woven paper collage designs:

Using photos of previously stitched work

A mix of images and crayon rubbings creates a very textured collage

An alternative way of combining images

A combination of two different street images gives an interesting view