Eastern Region Residential Weekend - Belsey Bridge 4th - 6th September - Design to Stitch

A fabulous print.

 I am slowly catching up with the blog, I taught at Art Van Go last week and am now up in Redditch teaching my ExTex 4 group. So there will be several blog posts coming up in quick succession.

 So - Design to Stitch for the Eastern Region Residential Weekend at Belsey Bridge conference Centre was booked almost 2 years ago - it was one of those bookings that had been in the diary for ages, and then came and went really fast. The added bonus was that my dear friend Wendy Dolan was also teaching there. We shared the journey over to Suffolk, Wendy drove which as you can imagine was a great relief. And Yes! We managed to get both lots of kit into one car. There some images of Wendy's workshop at the end of this post.

 Design to Stitch is basically my design workshop with more time to develop your prints with stitch.

Painting the Journeys
 
 Discussing the Journeys.

The Journeys all lined up.

A detail.
 
 
A selection of the expanded and flipping out exercises.

Once the design exercises were complete the students then took sections of their designs with 'L' shapes and isolated areas that they thought would make a good design. We then made printing blocks of the chosen designs.

 
 A selection of printing blocks.

 
 The printing blocks and test prints.


Once the printing blocks had been made the group had a chance to play with various paints and colour ways . .




Then we got onto layering prints and cutting back . . . using removed pieces as applique . .

Cutting back and layering.

                                  More cutting back and layering.


Removing areas of the print with a scalpel . . .


And then adding a contrast fabric behind the work, the pale green areas are part of a map.
Cutting up printed shapes and reassembling and layering. 
Ready for stitch.

                                             More cutting back.

 
The original print . . .

. . . with all the cream cut away and placed on a pink background, 
ready for stitch.
 
A run of prints with different areas of the print removed and re applied. 


Detail.

 
 Areas of the print have been removed, 
applied else where on the sample and a contrasting colour fabric (yellow)  placed behind the work.

There was some time for stitch - not a lot, but the group did really well . . .








There were 3 tutors teaching over the weekend and all the groups spent a very enjoyable hour wandering around looking at that been achieved over the past couple of days.
It was wonderful to see the group showing off all their work and explaining how and why they had done what with each sample. It is what my job is all about - LOVE it!
The other groups looking at our groups work.
Wendy also had a great weekend, her group produced some lovely work.

A great range of samples.
It was wonderful to spend some time Wendy, we have known each other for a long time and live in the same town - but rarely see each other as we are both so busy teaching all over the place.

This was a very well organised event and it was great fun being part of it. This is very friendly group of Guilds and if you are tempted to join or just wish to see hwat they get up to - have a look at this website. . .

www.embroiderersguildeast.org.uk

 ****

Hope you are having a good weekend.

More soon.

x x x


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