A great - and colourful, weekend!





Claire's wonderful zingy ginger cookies.

 The weekend was fast and furious and started on Friday night with The Old Needle Works Christmas/New Year party. It was great to see everyone again - it had been quite a while since we had all been together. There was lots of excited chat and of course fabulous food created by The Crafty Cafe.

Our wonderful leader - my dear friend Brenda Killigrew.
 
 The wonderful Linda Lavin who does her best to keep the office (and Brenda) under control.
  
 The seemingly inexhaustible Sharon of The Crafty Cafe,

 
  . . .  and the lovely Joan who does more than anyone realises for everyone else - she is a STAR!!!

 The party finished at a reasonably sensible time as we all had a busy weekend ahead with several classes due in. The Old Needle Works like many thousands of businesses was flooded not once but twice - the second time just after the the floors had been made good from the first flood. This has been a nightmare, luckily there is a spare teaching studio that 2 classes can share. As I was was also due in to teach my ExTex group that made THREE classes.

As luck would have it, one of my ExTex students has a studio of her own at The Old Needle Works and VERY kindly said we could work in there at the weekend. She knew how messy we would be and she STILL offered!
  
 The group working hard in Heidi's studio.

This being the eighth weekend of a nine weekend course, the nerves are starting to set in. The group are highly aware that their End of Year Show is at the end of March at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch Show at the NEC (so no pressure).
Experimental Textiles is not an accredited course so the only pressure put on the group is their own. The point of the course is to help develop confidence in the students practise. Whilst I encourage the group to keep folders and up to date with course work, that is all I can do as there is no pass or fail.
Even with the absence of the qualification 'stick', the group have produced some amazing work and fabulous folders. I am very much looking forward to showing them off - I am very proud of them. Most of the group work full time
and/or have other commitments so they are hard pushed to keep up with the course.


Heidi has a very tidy studio so we could just move in right away.

The 'taught' weekends have finished and the group are now working on their own projects - self directed study with me ready to leap to the rescue should I be required. I usually make a cake to take in but Claire had said she would bake one. ONE - she made a batch of gorgeous ginger cookies, a tin of flapjacks and these heavenly lemon and lime drizzle cakes.

 
 Claire's lemon and lime drizzle cup cakes.

So - to the work produced over the weekend. I don't really want to show you any finished work from now on as it will spoil the surprise of the show. I will be showing you work in progress - 

 
 Sally had a great time at the weekend working with the bright colours of transfer paints, here she is cutting out the negative spaces of a design with a scalpel.
 
 Lots of colourful fun was had.

 This was my favourite sample.

Tracey tends to work in chaos - like many of us she believes 'from chaos comes creativiy'!!!!

A pile of Tracey's machine stitched paper samples.

 
 More samples  . . .
 
 Transfer printing onto Vilene spunbond that has been machine stitched, cut with a soldering iron and foiled.

Sharing space with other classes can be very inspiring. Louise Pocock was teaching millinery in the next door studio and helped Tracey with some 3D ideas for one of her samples.

 Heidi had a good time painting newspapers and novels and creating some gorgeous surfaces with painted Bondaweb and all manner of sparkly things.

Shaun spent a lot of the weekend drawing and developing designs for some new printing blocks.

Jo spent some time working on the design for her finished project and then spent the last afternoon stitching colour samples.

Jo is a very tidy worker and her threads are beautifully sorted and in order.

Claire spent the whole weekend delighting in some transfer paper that was used to pack the handbag that was her daughters birthday present. there were several metres of great 'transfer' paper. Claire has been developing some ideas using various layers of polyester organza.

The weekend was very fast moving and we all missed Emma who couldn't make it as she is struggling with the beginning of term and reports. It is very tough trying to juggle your working life and further education. We are all looking forward to seeing her next month.

X

I am thinking up new packs for nid-noi.com - if any of you have any ideas do drop me a line info@kimthittichai.com


Keep Warm!!!!!

Comments

  1. Lots of inspiration, as always and it all sounds like great fun. Yummy cakes too!!

    ReplyDelete

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