Shelley Rhodes

I think I may have mentioned our trip to Lancashire and the fact that it was prompted by the lure of a workshop with Shelley Rhodes.  I had seen Shelley's work at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace last year and hoped that her workshop would challenge me and lead me on in my quest for better self expression in my textile work.

Shelley has a spacious and welcoming studio in the beautiful countryside near Carnforth Lancashire.

The studio is the main building with roof fanlights and is a lovely stone building with exposed wood rafters. I think there were 8 of us for the workshop but the day was so busy that there was barely time to say hi.

The workshop was titled 'Fabulous Fragments' and before we went Shelley asked us to collect items from which to work in a small box and to photograph them in various groupings and print off A4 images.  It didn't take much thought for me to decide to take a selection of beach finds.

We went through a series of hectic exercises to enable us to study a selected item and consider the marks it revealed and also to produce papers from which to work later and to distress some of the printed images.

We had a brainstorming session so that we could introduce ourselves and say what had interested us by our chosen 'fragments'.  I settled on working with the greeny shell in the box and I also used the encrusted piece of plastic I found on the beach in Cornwall some time ago.

From the shell I made marks on a piece of paper I had constructed but  I didn't think to photograph it in its entirety before I cut into it later. The following photographs pretty much show the whole piece but in sections.

Some of the marks above were already on the papers I used.  The dark ink marks and various pastel marks were part of the process.  We also started to join pieces of prepared papers and fabrics together to work towards either a finished piece or a series of small pieces,

These holes were meant to echo the holes in the plastic and would reveal the underlying layers when used in a piece of work.

The final piece is made up of linen, a piece of my printed paper, hand made paper and tracing paper  and was worked into with stitch.  Clearly it needs a lot more work and will probably remain as a sample.  Shelley suggested that I grow it vertically and I may do that when I have the time to work with it further. 

At Shelley's suggestion I used 'L-shapes' to isolate areas of the larger piece of constructed paper and came up with some interesting sections which were attached to a backing with tiny gold pins, a tiny piece of the encrusted plastic being added as a unifying link.

I think the top photo is upside down but it sort of works either way.  I think these warrant further work and may even develop into larger textile pieces.  I'm not sure how big the last image will enlarge to but I was fascinated to see the detail in the plastic after I took the photo.  The shapes there are reminiscent of stitch and take me back to micro to macro of Jo Budd's workshop last year at Summer School.  

We also made time for a little monoprinting on lens tissue and other surfaces exploring our marks further

No time to include these in any work on the day but potential nonetheless. 

I am still digesting everything we did on the day but I have lots of ideas to take forward.  The workshop was full on and two days would have been wonderful but I was glad I made the journey.  Shelley is a calm yet stimulating teacher and it would be great to work with her again to develop some of these ideas. 

More from Lancashire and two beautiful Arts and Crafts houses soon.

Thank you Gina

Yesterday I travelled down to Peterborough, a short train ride from here, to join a Free Machine Embroidery workshop with the lovely Gina Ferrari. The workshop took place at Art And Stitch and its aim was to use the sewing machine to create a variety of textures to be used in a landscape type picture. I had been waiting for this workshop for several months and really looking forward to it as Gina is a very unassuming and generous teacher and I knew that I would learn a lot. I had high hopes and I was not disappointed!


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As you can see we were suitably supervised throughout the workshop by this very attractive young lady who I think may have been laughing at me a little! :)

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There were 10 of us taking part in the workshop and we soon made our presence felt by spreading ourselves out to fill the available table space.

Angela and Pam who run Art and Stitch kept the tea and coffee flowing all day and even supplied sustaining biscuits (chocolate and I think I spied Jammy Dodgers too!) in the afternoon when energies might have been flagging a little.
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Gina eased us in gently with a little basic Free Machine practice but then soon had us working on small pieces which would become part of our final pieces. Before we got started on the stitching we painted bondaweb and tyvek which would be used in the afternoon to construct the landscapey scenes.

We stitched onto net which had been stabilised with water soluble membrane which was then dissolved away and prepared other texture with small pieces of knitting, the looser and holier the better, and also a little crochet.

Above is the tyvek with sheers stitched on top and blasted with the heat gun. Unfortunately my blue sheer came from an old scarf, maybe silk, and it did not respond to the heat gun other than to start burning! Oops! Despite that it has given me a nice dark piece which has its own texture.

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So, by the afternoon we had knitted and crocheted pieces, embroidered netting, painted and stitched tyvek with sheers and a background of painted bondaweb to work with in adition to fabrics we had brought with us.

This is my very-much-a-work-in-progress seascape. My first piece of knitting came out with too tight a tension so I cut into it and opened it up before I stitched it down. It is the lowest layer in the piece above. I also cut up the stitched net to get more sympathetic shapes that would suggest wave shapes in my sea. I also incorporated scrim and previously painted nappy liner and velvet to start building the landscape. I have a lot of work to do to complete the scene but I really enjoyed getting this far. The idea is to use Free Machining to attach and incorporate the pieces together. Hopefully I will get time to work on this some more this week and it will then become my Journal Quilt for November.

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I have to confess to a 'Eureka' moment during all this process. A light suddenly went on in my poor old brain while I was Free Machining in zigzag and I suddenly could see how I could use stitch to build and describe movement, landscapes, flowerscapes or whatever I want to make. I know that may be very obvious to all of you out there but I suddenly realised that I was capable of using this very simple device to achieve what I have been working towards for the past couple of years. FME has always seemed a great mystery to me but Gina's teaching at the previous and this workshop has opened me up to exciting possibilities. I know you read everywhere about Free Machining and drawing with the needle but it all seems a bit unreal till you actually sit down and do it. I'm not saying I'm suddenly going to turn into a Diva embroiderer but I am very excited to have this new tool to play with. I am also not scared of working on this piece because, if I make a 'mistake' I know I can use more stitch, handsewing and beads to get round it. Watch this space!

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If you live anywhere near Peterborough do check out Art and Stitch. They are a lovely bunch of people and make you feel like one of the family and their workshops are always accompanied by copious cups of tea and coffee.

Collage

Even though we have been going to St Ives for several years and already have hundreds of photographs I still managed to take over 450 more! I still haven't loaded all of them onto the computer yet! Rather than bore you with loads of individual photos I've made up some collages of images that I hope will interest you and provide me with some inspiration for future projects.

Most of the images above were taken on beaches or pathways but the one in the bottom left corner is the wood on the side of the Round House Gallery in Sennen Cove. (More of Sennen in a later post).

I'm sure the patterns in the sand above will come in handy. I just need to find the time to play about with them in Photoshop.

I drew the heart myself but all the other textures and patterns were there for the taking. The Tall Ship in the top left hand corner is the Stavros S Niarchos owned by the Tall Ships Youth Trust. It arrived early in the morning and stayed all day to provide some great photo opportunities while the youngsters got some practice in.

Derbyshire Textures

We had a slight change of plan last weekend and, instead of going to stay with my DSD (who had mixed up the dates for our visit), decided to spend a few days in the Peak District. I used to spend a lot of time in Derbyshire but hadn't been back for many years. We spent a lovely weekend in a rented cottage in the village of Taddington, just outside Buxton.

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The weekend was spent visiting one or two of the local towns and then on Sunday we had a lovely walk along Miller's Dale, one of the many beautiful Dales in the Peak District. While I concentrated on taking photos of textures my DH took the view shots and I have included a couple of links above to his blog. He will no doubt be including more photographs over the next day or two so I shall be lazy this time and suggest that you might like to look in at his blog for his story of the weekend.

Inspiration!