Samines

I help your hands create something beautiful

Category: Embroidery

  • 3 week beginners crewelwork course and all that follows

    3 week beginners crewelwork course and all that follows

    I have spent two hours on a number of content projects to upload and link from Sewing with Samines YouTube channel to Eventbrite; to find the event has already closed and it will not allow me to open it back up, to cropping a video to try and upload here on the website.

    It has been in the last few weeks that a new idea emerged about uploading the demonstration embroidery videos to YouTube. Initially I was thinking of uploading to a private channel, but that would be more work for me with my embroidery learners and I am a sessional tutor, uploading videos to YouTube would take me away from embroidering, which I love. Also, it doesn’t sit well with my current energies of recovering from long covid, I call it the long c as I do not want that to be my identity during this time of recovery. Just this morning I worked on closing the course report to send to a senior manager and I did a few other bits, this was between 9-9.50am, I was going to pack the laptop away so I could go to the library and discovered I needed to rest, which I did and I ended up sleeping for an hour on the sofa between 10-11am. Once I woke up I realised I had energy and I have been working across these different platforms, I can feel brain pressure or headaches, so I better be quick as I am stretching into 2 & ½ hours, (I have had a few breaks, but not the same as my morning break).

  • Quilting and Embroidery Bag

    Quilting and Embroidery Bag

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    I have titled this project as Quilting and Embroidery Bag which has been designed for ACL Islington.

    The fabric is calico and the original design came from clip art and then I modified it to put channels in. Channels as you can see from the picture are two parrel lines in either straight or curved lines to form the design. Maleeka a past learner of mine wanted to do embroidery birds and you know when an idea or thought is shared it can sit with you and only be released in two ways, one you forget about it or two you act upon the idea and create it into reality. I looked through a lot of clip art bird images and could not really find one that I liked and so I am glad I was able to modify this owl to fit in with the Italian quilting technique.

    Once the channels are sewn in and it took a long time as I first started off with back stitch and took me a whole hour for one side. The stitches were bubbling up, which means they were looping up as the thread in the needle is double and not single, and then I thought I would try how the running stitches would look instead, much much better! So, I am pleased with the end results, I left the back and running stitch in the same piece so I could show my learners my thought and design process, they were glad that I did.

  • Goldwork for Hector Maclean

    Hector Maclean Tatler

    I had a very crazy idea that I acted on, I asked Hector Maclean if he needed help with his collection and that I had potentially one or two embroidery learners who may help him, he said yes!

    This piece that has been worked on is by Tatu, Hector printed his logo on the grey velvet and asked Tatu to crack on with the gold work. I need to say that Tatu has only been with me since September 2024 and although she is a beginner, she is more of an advanced beginner. I would love to teach how to do gold work, but I would not as for a 10cm square piece it costs roughly £20 for the gold threads and considering I have eight or ten learners depending on the numbers and it is a free course it not realistic in the budget. The piece also has beads sewn in around the inside of the circle and Hector used ribbon from his brothers wedding, I love that detail.

    Hector Maclean initials in goldwork
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  • Week 7 embroidery appliqué flowerpots

    Week 7 embroidery appliqué flowerpots

    I am teaching embroidery appliqué flowerpots and I have created a 10/11 week course so the embroidery learners have something to get their teeth into it, I decided to teach 10 stitches, but I think it may have been too many and I have already made a mental note to teach six or less stitches for next term. In this terms work I have broken each stage down and have given the first week to sketching their design within the given brief. I think keeping the learners on track within a chosen topic helps them develop a critical eye of creating and keeping within a brief especially if a client asks them later down the line to make them something, as too many choices in the beginning can be overwhelming and that’s when learners can decided learning embroidery as with any other skill feels too hard.

    Over the first term we have covered creating their own designs, three or four weeks covering different stitches and they take their samples home with them to practice and another week learning how to pin fabric onto the main fabric, which is calico and sewing the appliqué down, appliqué is a technique used within embroidery and crazy patchwork. The lesson on Wednesday was to start them off on their main project as in week 11 they will be lacing their pieces up. Not all the learners have been coming each week which is a frustration as I have to chase them to find out where they were, (that’s is if they have communicated), this part of teaching is not my favourite, as it is much needed effort on my part and while I am in recovery of long Covid it’s not the energy I want to expend. For the learners who do communicate on why they were late or could not attend gives me an openness of heart towards them and it shows me they value the embroidery classes.

    Yesterday I delivered my first live online class for ACL, it went well, three learners attended and one had technical difficulties and so they dropped out. I didn’t take an adequate break and I suffered for it afterwards. I closed my eyes and felt my body sink into deep sleep, it took quite a while to regain energy to force myself out of home to take some fresh air. I couldn’t stay out too long as I knew I needed more rest and then came home to sink back onto the sofa. My energies were so low I didn’t have enough to stand and play with the cat. I am much better at taking breaks when teaching in person and now I need to transfer this to when teaching online. As you can see from the photo above of the sample shown and demonstrating from that the picture was taken today. My table is still in a bit of a mess which for me is not super helpful as I do like to create in order and not when everything is all over the place.

    What I have relearnt going forwards for the live online classes is to write down an equipment list I need for the class so everything is at hand, as when I was tidying away the table to teach I tidied the pins away not thinking I needed them.

  • CPD Teacher Training

    CPD Teacher Training

    It has been a very long while since I have written a blog and I am feeling quite nervous about it. May 2023 saw me have Covid for a week and I tested positive on my birthday, so where I was to see my sister instead I was on my own in bed feeling quite unwell, I was sleeping loads, had a high temperature with a fever running up and down my arms and the sensation of what I now I understand is fatigue. I had no idea I would develop long Covid and I had also no idea that I really needed to have given myself three months of sleeping between 10-12 hours each night to have gotten over the virus. Six weeks after the Covid infection and trying to push pass the fatigue I had written a blog and in slow motion I saw myself hover over the delete button and deleted my website. I pushed passed through the fatigue again and phone Ionas up and they recovered it, but the passwords they gave me didn’t work the next day, after two straight days being on the phone to talk to somebody about the issue I was too stressed to push through the emotions and so I let time slip by until I could cope with sorting out the website.

    Then James came onto the scene to help me and he has been truly a gift as he knows what he is doing and got me back in.

    So now we come to teacher training, I was on Teams attending the CPD training at ACL at Islington and I took the picture so I could later find this principle on Youtube, this session was about mirroring and how we get the learner to mirror the technique back to you or you mirror what the learner is saying. I now have secured a position as one of the sewing tutors at ACL, I teach embroidery. I love teaching embroidery and I have been told by my learners as well as my managers that I am a very good teacher, which is so encouraging to hear! And it is showing through the ideas I come up with as I teach my own designs and break it down into stages, I create power points with images and I video my demonstrations of teaching how to sew each embroidery stitch, they also have test, there are power points for embroidery equipment, I have learnt how to navigate Moodle so I can upload the power points for each week. Some weeks are blank which seems to be in the second half of the term as most of the techniques are covered, there is a final technique for this course for Embroidery Appliqués Flowerpots, but that will be released in week 10 or 11 as they will learn how to mount their embroidery onto mount card and then they can frame the piece.

  • Wendy Dolan Workshop with Blackheath Embroidery

    Wendy Dolan Workshop with Blackheath Embroidery

    I did the all-day workshop with Blackheath Embroiderers; it was a thank you from our group and in celebration of our second-year anniversary since we have become an independent stitch group. The Embroiderer’s Guild closed all its branches as it did not have the finances to support the branches, we were unsure if we would survive, but thankfully everyone involved took to the challenge of meeting online during the pandemic and we have not looked back since.

    You can see from the photos of stages of layering of fabric onto the linen that will eventually become a picture of a painting I did while I was in Silicily in September 20201, the stitching is taking on a life of it’s own and the original picture that I am working from is now only a guide to the colours and not actual shapes, I am loving how the piece is developing every time I stitch it.

    My first initial thoughts were to leave the green satin on the painted background, but when Wendy Dolan had a look at my piece, she suggested to put strips of organza over the satin as then it would soften the piece and she was right in her assessment.

    I am currently working on this piece in building layers of stitching up to create a meadow, but my piece was not of a meadow, but of a green sub and flowers over the wall that was in front of my balcony I was sharing at the time.