Samines

I help your hands create something beautiful

Category: Workshop

  • 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).

  • Blackheath Ladies Fascinator

    Screenshot

    I am learning a new photo editing programme called Gimp and I have successfully saved the above image to jpg format and blurred out the names of the Blackheath Ladies who attended the workshop in April 2021 from the screen shot.

  • 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.

  • Flower Crown Red – That Became Peach

    Flower Crown Red – That Became Peach

    “I really have enjoyed it and impressed that I have pulled this off from scratch so quickly”.

    Claire – 2021 – Live online workshop

    I have been a bit slack in updating the website for a number of reasons and Orville has been siting in a folder all on his own waiting for me to figure out how to put another page for the website for Testimonials and now that I have it up and running, I just see that I can only put two testimonials up, as I have pictures of the customers. Going forward, I may just need to play around with it and tweak it here and there.

    Claire was impressed that she managed to pull this off so fast and it helped that she creates with fabric with her children already, so showing her this technique was a good tool to aid to her creativity box.

  • Beginners Crewelwork Embroidery.

    Beginners Crewelwork Embroidery.

    Sample of piece in progress, actual design and instructions sent to the pupil.

    I had the opportunity to teach this online class on Saturday 20th June. Nancy was unsure she could do any of the stitches as it was her first-time embroidering, she normally works with tapestry yarn for her creative outlook, she learnt how to do the Pekinese stitch as well as the woven wheel and was able to tell me the steps of completing each stitch. We were both pleased with the result as it was a win win situation and lesson for both, the teacher guiding the pupil and the pupil responding to the lesson and mirroring back the technique.

  • Flower making workshop

    I had the opportunity to attend Lora Avedian’s workshop with Blackheath Embroiderers in June, she showed us her techniques of how she makes her flowers. It was a great exposure to a different technique that does require a smocking machine and if you didn’t have a machine, (they can cost about £200) then you can hand smock and would take a lot longer. I remember trying a smocking machine when studying for my City & Guilds Embroidery, I didn’t take to it.