Alysn Midgelow-Marsden ~ ''Hanging Pods''

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

 Alysn guided us through the
                                                                   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



Bobby Britnell lecture

Bobby Britnell talked to a packed house this afternoon at our branch AGM. Unfortunately we were so engrossed we forgot to take photos.

Her talk covered her beginnings designing costumes for the Black and White minstrel show through learning tailoring and into teaching.
Bobby spoke about what influenced and influences her work. Music, landscape and her early work experience all feature in her pieces throughout the years.
Of late she is being inspired by her charity Hands up Uganda.  Alongside the brilliant work her and her husband are doing in working with a village in uganda she is being excited by the barkcloth that's being produced and a game people play.
All this  has led to a collaboration with a shoemaker and a fashion designer who uses barkcloth on the catwalk and she has produced a prolific amount of work.
It was a really inspiring talk full of good humour.
Check out her work at
www.bobbybritnell.co.uk