Day 1

Early thing this morning I headed up to Rugby by car, I was originally thinking of getting the train but changed my mind at the last minute, as I had never been to Rugby before and didn't know how far it would be to walk from the station to the Library, where the course is being held.  All of the main locations in Rugby appear to be well sign-posted and ignoring the sat-nav I ended up in the right place first time!  The Library and Museum are in a new building right in the centre of town, opposite Asda with a large carpark in front of them.  There were the 2 tutors, Nikki and Sarah,and 4 students today. Two of the ladies had already been on some day courses with the RSN and had made a start on their designs and stitching so that  left 2 of us to think about a design for the crewelwork module.  After we had coffee and an introductory chat we looked through books and other source material before Nikki use her fantastic artistic skills to draw the elements we wanted to include ready for tracing and photocopying.  The designs traditionally have hillocks, a tree, leaves, flowers and a bird or animal - so my design will have hillocks, a tree shape, a large leaf, a carnation and a robin. Once the design had been drawn, traced and photocopied to the right size it was time to colour it in, deciding which colours should go where and then which stitches to be used in the various areas.  I will be using shades of terracotta and green with accents of blue and gold.

After lunch we started to prepare the material to work on by framing it up on new 'slate frames' - the carefully ironed linen twill was centred and sewn to the webbing on the top and bottom slats, then webbing was stitched to the 2 sides before it was bound with string to the 2 sides of the frame.  The string was tightened so that the fabric was drum tight in the frame.  Now it is ready for the pattern to be transferred onto it next time I go up to Rugby.  I really enjoyed my first day on the certificate, learnt lots and am looking forward to my next visit in a couple of weeks time.  In the meantime I can practice the various stitches that I will be using in my design using the wools on calico.  I can also try the different colour combinations although I don't have all of the shades of the two main colours yet.


Later whenI left the Library I drove around the centre of Rugby and discovered how far it is away from the railway station - I think I will be driving up there in future especially when I have to carry the heavy frame and other materials as it is about a 20 minute walk into town.