Saturday 8th May - Tales of the Unexpected - Elise Stewart

This afternoon Elise took us through her journey of using different materials in her work, from recycled sheeting, paper, plastics , Tyvek. wool and wire.

From this                                                to this

 

Elise explained how she used rusting fabric in her work

Here was some work done for a project called the Beyondness of Bees, using glow in the dark threads and paints

..... and some using pins and threads

These pieces were part of a collaborative piece where fabrics were swapped. Theses were dyed and painted

Next some work done with Jean Littlejohn where strips of fabric were overlaid with bondaweb, scrim and knitting yarn.

Elise took her recycling to the limit using the top of one of her husbands socks!!

The next pieces were for an exhibition called Fabulous Fungi

and yes all these pieces used dyed and painted Baby wipes!!

Elise wanted to do a piece of work based on her pergola. She got her husband to make the frame from kebab skewers and then suspended  her sun dyed silk fabric from it.

This was some heat treated pond liner that she will use in some work

These two pieces used metal from coffee pods and wire, and Kraft- tex paper

... and these are Friendly plastic, with beads and fabric strips

This book was covered with leaf printed paper and stitch

After a visit to the Needle Museum Elise did a representation of the Needle displays, using twigs that she couched down

 

Here the leaves have been incorporated  using Bondaweb and Chiffon

Thank you Elise for giving an insight into your wacky use of materials

 24th April - Cashmere Flowers - Mandy Wilkes

We had a lovely afternoon making flowers from Cashmere fabric. We  had all  been provided with a pack of small pieces of Cashmere and some circle pattern pieces.

The technique used is Japanese Kansashi and here are some that Mandy made 

Once again it was lovely to sit and chat and sew together.

Here are some of the completed flowers

There were also variations on the use of the cashmerere 

and also using different fabrics after the workshop

 

Thank you for a lovely afternoon Mandy and not forgetting her daughter , Harmony who helped with the technical issues!!!

 10th April - Creative Collage with Clare Wasserman

We had a fun afternoon with Clare making  creative collages.

Clare started the afternoon with a talk on collage. She explained its use in Surrealism, Pop Art and making political statements.

The word collage comes from the French word coller, to stick.

She showed us examples of work by many artists who used collage in their work including Lee Krasner, Wangechi Mutu, James Castle and John Piper.

We were then sent off to find three items to create a still life. We used magazine paper, painted papers , paper napkins etc and cut these freely into the shapes of the three items.

Here are some of our still life creations

The second half of the session was to create a self portrait using the same technique to show our personality.

This was also great fun and here are some of our branch!!!

    
                             

                                                                                                

Thank you Clare for a great afternoon