A rather loooooong post!

I have just spent two very enjoyable days in the company of 15 very talented embroiderers from the Dorking area making paper laminations. I had asked them to bring along an A3 size black and white photocopy of a photograph they had taken, and after they had been laminated onto voile, they needed to dry. You can see some of them above, hanging in the sunshine.

 

At the beginning of the second day, we started by taking a look at all the pieces together, before continuing with the colouring up part of the process using paint and crayons. Once this part was finished, the final stage of stitching into the pieces could begin,  using either machine or hand stitch, or a combination of both.

Of course, colour photocopies could be used, but the results from colouring up a black and white copy give far more interesting results, and in my opinion make the work more personal and creative.

I have put a photo of each of the pieces on here, as they were by the end of the second day, although I know that most of them still had lots of stitching before they will be finished. As my memory for names is not 100%, I didn't want to put the wrong name to the wrong piece, so I have decided not to include names at all. I hope the Ladies concerned will forgive me, but you all know who you are, and I thank you all very much for giving me permission to include your lovely work on my blog.

 

As can be seen here, these are gorgeous examples of work, and I hope that at some point I will have the opportunity to see them finished! I really enjoyed teaching this workshop, and it was an absolute pleasure to spend two days in such good company.

I have continued to work on my 'bird' project, and have two more experimental textile pieces below. I decided to think about Owls, and their haunting night time 'hoots', and then went back to my crows. I had this funny little story going around in my head, whereby Mr. Crow, was having delusions of grandeur, and was seeing himself wearing a gloriously flamboyant coat of shimmering feathers, while his rough 'caw caw' call was transformed into the most rich and heavenly song!! Poor old Mr. Crow eh!

A few years ago I attempted to make a wall hanging depicting birdsong, but it never quite worked, and has been lurking in the back of a drawer ever since. Hey ho, never throw anything away, I rescued it, chopped it up, and it is now the cover for a concertina book that I have made up with all my bird samples, keeping them together, and easy to refer back to.

Finally, my journal quilt for August, and this the fourth in my series for the rhyme, 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.' This is the something blue, and our daughter chose to have the table decorations and buttonholes made from dyed and woven New Zealand Flax. These flowers were woven by a lady she knows in N.Z., and were dyed a rich ruby red, green and a gorgeous purple/blue, as well as natural. The buttonholes for the men were very simple strips woven in natural and green, so that element is represented here too, and gives me the 'line' from one edge to another which is part of this years criteria.

Phew! a busy week, and a rather long post, so if you have managed to get this far, thanks for reading, and I wish you a peaceful weekend!