The agricultural college is set in extensive grounds in a lovely rural area, and within the complex are a beautiful walled garden, and lots of small zoo animals (meerkats, otters, monkeys, etc) as the college is a training centre for zoo keepers as well as for farmers.
Wyn, Jane and Mandy took the course tutored by Janet Browne, which was mainly machine embroidery with some hand-embellishment. Janet makes beautiful maps and illustrations, mainly of personal journeys and observations, many including the area around her home in Addingham, Ilkley, or places that she has travelled to. Here are a few pieces of her work so that you can see what we were aspiring to!
Janet emphasised that we should try to develop our own style, rather than emulating hers, so that our work would have our own identity.
The technique used is a bit like reverse appliqué, with the work being stitched from the back and with the background pieces being added first, working forward to the front of the piece.
First of all we unpacked our essentials
Then we all stitched a "simple" building to practice the techniques that Janet showed us
Jane chose her garden shed and greenhouse, she has yet to add the foreground details.
Wyn made a row of beach huts with some festive bunting.
Mandy made a beach hut and added some hand embroidery to finish
the piece off.
Jane was rather warm and shocked Wyn into getting her camera out…
Mandy made a few more pieces (below);
Wyn and Jane have works in progress.
This is Mandy Moo (Cakes)
This shows how to add "glass" to your piece
These are some fishy cupcakes, and below, the originals...
Sue T took the crewel work class run by Nicola Jarvis, a tutor from the Royal School of Needlework, which was based around William Morris-inspired birds.
This is the robin that Sue has been working on; she promises that it will be finished by our August meeting!
We all had a smashing weekend, with lovely food, time for relaxation in the evenings (although we all carried on stitching whilst socialising!) and plenty of laughter!
No comments:
Post a Comment