Workshop
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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Preloved Jubilee Needlecase Design
How will you use yours? Both these photos are of the front of the needlecase, I will show you how to sew the needlecase and bag it out, but before we get to that place you need to decide if you want all your seeding stitches in your circles to be red, white or blue, or maybe you want to do a combination of red and white for the circles. This is what I love about teaching, making my samples and giving the options to adapting the pattern to how you dear reader want it to be. As you know I have been doing physio to get strength back into…
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Lizzie
I really enjoyed working with Lizzie, she said “the workshop was great for mindfulness and bringing her into a state of calmness”. I gave Lizzie a private workshop experience before the actual workshop of Samines Red as she was stuck in doors with Covid, she choose to rest and heal herself before being fit enough to come back into the world again. During the workshop Lizzie decided to sew all her petals together to make one large corsage flower and I think it has worked out well. It was great to see her on zoom, I love zoom as it has opened up the world for people to connect who…
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Samines Red
When creating this piece I was teaching another workshop online and while waiting as my client was working in her flower crown, I used the time to make another flower. In earlier times before starting to make the satin flowers I used to make corsages on the sewing machine and using ribbons embedded with machine embroidery on rectangular fabric pieces that would be wrapped around around the wrist.
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Which Sewing Machine is best?
I thought I would introduce you to Kit, although he is lovely and naughty, (well he is a kitten) I am not blogging about him. My friend has a condition called dyspraxia which affects the physical co-ordination and we were discussing sewing machines, she said that if she had bought a larger sewing machine, the bottom picture of a Jenome 4400 when we were first in lockdown she didn’t think she would be able to cope with the motor and pedal being so fast, for her the smaller sewing machine was ideal as it built up her confidence. It got me thinking about my friends condition, (when I was working…
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Valentines Heart Pin After The Session
This is my workshop space, top picture is before the workshop and the picture below is during the workshop, I got to go to my happy place, which was sewing embroidery stitches into the centre of the Valentine heart pin to create a unique and creative piece. Anna who attended the workshop said she was quite happy having a private session as she had all the attention and she was happy that she could finish her heart pin within the two hour session.
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Valentines Heart Pin
This is a piece of bondaweb that will be posted today for the packs to the workshop for Valentines Heart Pin, what I wanted to share with you was my printer wasn’t playing ball today. My frustration levels started to increase as the pattern for the hearts were not printing out and I switched the printer and computer off a few times to see if it would print. I tried to print from the copy that was on the scanner bed, but when switching the printer and computer back on, I thought lets see if I could print from Word and it did, then I thought let me see if…