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Richly Stitched by Alysn Midgelow-Marsden |
About a dozen tutors, both local, national and
international, and a couple of hundred keen embroiderers’ met this weekend at
Orewa near Auckland to have a fabulous time stitching, eating, chatting and
walking on the beach for the annual ‘Embroiderers Great Escape’
I had been invited by the kind invitation of the Great
Escape committee to join in and get people using their sewing machines with
metal shims and fabrics.
Jo Dixey was teaching appliqué with landscape, Alison
Coles was over from Aussie teaching beautifully fine goldwork, other tutors
were teaching printing, sashiko, Indian embroidery, lace braids and counted thread
work.
Alison Coles gave an enthusiastic and passionate talk
after the formal dinner showing images of her epic Italian tour, chasing just
about every display of goldwork and other embroidery Italy had to offer. I suspect
we all want to go now, though I doubt I have the cheeky and bold personality to
talk my way in to the out of the way places she did!
The aim of my course was for everyone to get a feel for
the metals and how to manipulate them and some of the techniques for creating
effects with stitch, using lovely velvets as our backing to add richness to the
projects.
Here are lots of pictures of our weekend. If Carole,
Rosemary, Gillian, Gina, Olivia, Patricia, Meg, Fiona, Deborah, Jenny, Pat or
Liz send me images of pieces when they are completed, I will add them to this
post.
I am always happy to see samples being made and added to
workbooks for future reference –they can be invaluable. I know that at least
one set of the samples will be added into a City and Guilds folder.
All hard at work |
Samples to be added to a handmade sample book |
Additions to C&G coursework |
Another
method to create a lovely sampler, which is also a finished piece, is to make
small individual samples then attach them to another backing fabric and couch a
big twist of fabric or cord between the samples, this both draws the samples
together and separates them, so that the original small pieces don’t have to be
thought out and matched up beforehand.
Big smiles, even after being forced to make cords and hand couch them down! |
Amazing what you can do in between feeding babies! |
The third option was to create a simple design with areas
into which the different techniques could be added as I introduced them,
concluding in a piece which used lots of techniques but had been designed as a whole
piece in advance.
Coming on really well, and where was that slight oops? I'll never tell. |
Don't close your eyes when machining - never a good plan. |
What only 3 complete pieces so far? (There's always one quick worker) |
Another prolific stitcher - a sample cloth and a piece all pretty much complete. |
Just a few more twists of stainless steel fabric, stitching and beads to go. The background had been made with bondaweb and tyvek - perfect for finishing this weekend. |
During the weekend everyone got on really well, and was
able to take home work which was needing just final flourishes using the beads
or threads that you didn’t bring but know you have ‘just the right one’ in your
stash at home.
Here is how some of them went home:
Well done all – participants and organisers alike.
3 comments:
Fantastic results.
Thanks for posting these images, Alysn. It was such a fun weekend and you were such a patient and inspiring teacher. I have beaded one side completely (baby knitting has been cast aside as I work on something far more thrilling), and I have decided on how I want it mounted. My embroidery ladies love all of the shiny things on this embroidery and want to come and raid my husband's workshop! Thank you again for a great weekend.
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