Workshop with Wadebridge WCE

 Last Wednesday I had the enjoyment of delivering my workshop, Open Work - Cut, Pulled and Drawn…. to the Wadebridge branch of The West Country Embroiderers. I had advanced warning that this is a group of very talented and proficient ladies and that was absolutely correct. They worked incredibly hard all day and produced a lovely range of samples that hopefully added new skills and new ideas to incorporate into their work. We started off with cut work and the ladies whizzed away on their machines.......... We moved on to pulled work, trying different ways to achieve this; using a more formal approach as well as using free machining to create the wonderful textures it is possible to make, including holey and ridged, using sweeping gathering lines, tightly bunched and so on, any of which might be perfect for a piece being worked on, who knows? One member using the free machined pulled work technique drew this lovely

depiction of a little flower. All this helped to show that the possibilities are endless and the scrim fabric used was light enough for all these bits and pieces if dyed appropriately, to make wonderful textural additions to embroideries. We finished up with pulled work. Again, the diversity was endless with members experimenting with taking out and adding in threads and then also using bits of assorted fabric remnants from my stash to create yet more variety. The day flew by and as usually happens I learnt something new too. One member found the scrim moved too much as she was trying to free machine out of the hoop, so she produced 2 little bits of the kind of material you use to stop things slipping in a drawer and used these to help her keep the scrim tensioned as she moved it about. It was a great success and......

a tip I shall certainly pass on. All in all it was a lovely day and I had some positive feedback from the group for example, "very interesting techniques", "explanations were clear", "inspiring", "very good day", "informative, never done this before" and "came away with new skills and ideas". 

It was a real pleasure to work with people so open to ‘having a go’ and willing to try whatever was suggested! 

These are some of the photographs from the day: