June 19th - Fabric birds - Gail Tutcher

We spent a lovely relaxed afternoon making fabric birds with Gail. She had put together a power point presentation., leading us step by step through the process.

Some of us used the beads that we had made during our May bead making workshop.

Here are some of the results of the afternoon

Thank you Gail for a lovely afternoon.

 

5th June Building on Tradition - Batik - Jenny O'Leary

 

 Since 2005 Jenny O'Leary has been exploring and developing her work in Batik working mainly with tissue paper, hot wax, bleach and inks often combined with stitch and mixed media. She used examples of her work to illustrate her talk and explain her enthusiasm and continued passion for this technique.

 31 of us joined Jenny for her talk this afternoon.

She told us that as she is not exhibiting at the moment, so she has been creating small pieces of work inspired by her daily walks.

Hot wax is traditionally applied as a resist to white fabric. However Jenny has developed a technique of applying the wax to collaged coloured tissue. This is then bleached in areas and the inks are then reapplied. She has used beeswax, and paraffin wax but now uses soya wax.. The bleach Jenny uses is Milton and is sometimes applied through a stencil.

Jenny also uses a brushable wax in her sketchbooks as it is easier to control.

The tools she uses are the traditional Tjanting but also items such as pastry brushes, bamboo calligraphy pens and card.

Her work during lockdown is taken from the photos from her walks and not only uses the techniques described above but also monoprints and drawings on both tissue and also teabag paper. She then glues these onto Khadi paper to mount them.

Here are some images of her work

Such lovely work Jenny. Thank you for such an inspiring talk

 

 22nd May Bead making workshop

We spent a couple of hours this afternoon making beads from paper, fabric, metal and Vylene. These were then wrapped with wire and thread. This is a lovely way of matching beads to your piece of work.

Here are some of the results of the workshop

    

 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!!!