I help your hands create something beautiful
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.
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 my wrist, as I improve in strength and mobility I am seeing the results of my hard work and that I can stitch for longer without it hurting. It still hurts if I have overdone it with other tasks and jobs that need doing, each day I see a little more progress and this gives me the encouragement to keep on going.
So I encourage you to keep going with your stitching, because if at first you don’t succeed that is when you need to say okay I can do this, I will give myself a break and then get back to it either that day or the next and with every yes of pushing through you will get to your end goal as well.
This needle-case has been recycled from a pair of mens jeans, this time cutting up the legs as they gave me the right size to work with. Stitches used are seeding and spilt stitch.
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 are from different countries. The experience of the online workshops are quite different to that of an actual in person workshop and I love the online experience as I get to meet new people from across the world, who would not have the opportunity to attend a live workshop, especially during this time as we are navigating out of the pandemic into a new world where we have to live with Covid and the waves that has and will produce in the future.
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.
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 as a learning disability support worker, I had a client who had the same condition, she was working within social services at the time and I was employed to help her with her admin work) and I thought my friend was absolutely correct in purchasing the smaller sewing machine. When I was working at John Lewis in Haberdashery, (I loved that job) we always advised our customers to buy the sewing machines that were selling in the £100 mark, (that’s over ten years ago, the machines would be about £150 now) especially if they wanted to sew cottons and progress to heavier weight cottons and denims and then they really needed to invest into a higher price sewing machine to support them on their sewing journey.
For all my clients and new clients who I am looking forward to serve and who I have supported who have learning disabilities if you want to purchase a sewing machine, maybe go for one that is like a toy, in the top picture to build your confidence before investing into a higher price model, if you do buy a higher price model, go very slowly and contact me at info@samines.com so we can discuss how best I can support you.
Let’s get back to Kit, he does love the sewing machine and he is not encouraged to walk on top of the sewing machine, but he is a boy kitten who seems to have a lot of energy and I asked my friend if she happened to see Kit on top of the machine, please could she send me a picture as I wanted to blog about the sewing machine.
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.