Today we welcomed back Alysn Midgelow-Marsden
Alysn has made a series of needle felted pods using a variety of fabrics with additions such as copper sheet, knitted wire tube, beads and hand embroidery
The work is 3D but there is the choice to make a 2D piece
Close up of the 2D piece
So we began to make our needle felted pieces using hand held barbed needles, or by using electronic embellishers
Carol began her pod using the theme of Christmas
Pat is using the embellisher for this red 'hot' piece
Elise and Clare with hand held felting tools
We were off with our ideas working with chiffon, velvet, felt, sari silk ribbon, Evolon, loose wool fibres, ribbons and Angelina
Dina's table with interesting developments
process of layering
The work for the panels of the pod started to develop
Everyone's head was down and the work flowed
Jude loosely following the lines of pattern from a drawing of a poppy head
Carole's Christmas pieces and the polystyrene egg to mount the work onto
Lillian's colourful pieces
Nearing the end of the embellishment and ready to cut out the panels to adorn the polystyrene shapes before hand or machine embroidery is added
Maggie's 3 pieces on heavy felt
Lovely velvet
Alysn demonstrated the application of foils with bondaweb to Gild our work
The technique of painting Alcohol dyes onto the metal gold leaf
Joy was the first to cut out her 'petals' for the pod
The end of the Day
We still have a lot to do but we collectively gathered our work with all of its wonderful textures and colours
The addition of beads and sequins
Reminiscent of little Faberge eggs
Some of us managed to begin assembly work adding beads to the external seams with blanket stitch
Ruth made a lot of lovely pieces for lots of pods using all of the techniques
Elise's work shimmers
Clare's tonal palette with lovely bead work
Carol's Christmas pod with beads, hand embroiders and the beginnings of an external seam in blanket stitch
This will make a lovely pod Lorraine
Margaret's blue and copper work is sumptuous
Jude's chiffon on muslin with silk and woollen fibres and embellished by hand embroidery, beads and buttons
Our thanks to Alysn for a wonderful relaxing day. We look forward to your next visit from New Zealand to us hopefully in July/August 2017. It will be upon us before we know it, so you have been warned in plenty of time if you don't want to end up on the reserve list again!
Jude