Summer School 2006

During the summer I attended a summer school for 3 days run by our embroidery teacher, Catherine I thought it was time that I put the work onto my blog for all to see. Last year at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace I went to a 1 hour workshop run by the Fibre Factory which was about using various threads and fabrics to create an embellished piece of embroidery - this was my finished piece.

This piece gave Catherine the inspiration for the summer school - we started with some source material for the colours - these day lilies were mine

Then we painted papers with procion dyes - we only had 6 colours to work with - 3 warm colours - golden yellow, vibrant magenta and indigo navy, and 3 cool colours - lemon yellow, scarlet and brilliant blue. We were encouraged to play with the colours, mixing them to achieve colours that we liked and painting them on the paper.

After we had painted the papers we then space dyed a selection of fabrics and threads.



Using a picture or selection of pictures as design source material we experimented, again with paper, to develop shapes and ultimately a basis for a design that we could stitch.



This was my pencil drawing with notes on it - as you can see I'm not the best artist in the world.


We then started to experiment and sample different techniques and stitches that we might use in our finished piece.



Then came the fun part of doing the actual stitching - this is the finished article - maybe one day I'll decide what to do with it.


At the end of the 3 days we laid all our inspiration and experiments out for all to see.


It was a really nice, relaxing, fun 3 days.

This is a picture of the completed autumn piece - only winter to go. I have yet to decide on a picture to base it on. It is very difficult to find a photo which depicts winter that isn't misty and grey or all white and that is interesting.

Autumn again is sponged with brown, yellow, orange and green fabric paints - I use Jacquard, then stitched in perle cotton with fly stitch. Originally I was going to do leaf shapes in cretan stitch but decided to go more abstract, however, once I had started stitching I thought they looked like sycamore seeds falling to the ground.

Today I am going to show you the first two pieces I have done for the first module of the Level 3 City and Guilds course I am doing by distance learning with WS-Touchbase in Dorset. As part of the first module looking at colour we had to find photos depicting each of the four seasons, pick out the main colours from the photos, using fabric paint sponge the colours onto plain fabric then using similar colours stitch onto the fabric using the stitches we have practised. I am not showing the original photos as they are copyrighted.

This first picture shows spring - the original photo was on a postcard depicting a bluebell wood - I have used feather stitch and mainly perle cottons on a calico background.


The second picture is summer taken from a photo of a meadow in the height of summer. This time I have used buttonhole stitch radiating both inwards and outwards again in perle cotton on calico.

I am now working on autumn then need to finally decide on a picture for winter.

This is a wall hanging that I have started based on a design from a Fabrications magazine I bought a few years ago. I have used a piece of 'Sky Dyes' fabric by Micky Lawler that I bought in America to create the sky and now have to start quilting it.


Will show the finished wallhanging later.

Waddesdon Manor
Today started of very grey and misty but the weather forecast promised sunshine later, so DH and I decided to head out to Waddesdon Manor this afternoon. As soon as we got there the sun came out and it was really warm walking through the grounds and the house. Here are a few pictures showing it in all its 'French' glory - it really does look like a French Chateau and is richly decorated inside (it belonged to the Rothschild family before the National Trust took it over)

These are the grounds showing their autumnal colours

This is the aviary which had been restored and regilded in time for this season

This is a photo I took of the main garden and back of the house when I went with my mum back in June when the flowers were in full bloom