I'm about a week behind with posts at the moment - last Wednesday and Thursday I took a couple of days off the paid job to do an Embroiderer's Guild workshop on Creative Embroidery aka "A Clarty (messy) Workshop with Kathryn Slaughter" of Kate's Kloths. She no longer has the shop shown on her website (which I think is also to disappear quite soon), but will still sell her beautiful hand dyed threads and fabric online - maybe on Ebay.

It was a bit of a family affair as she brought along her mum, mum-in-law and aunt-in-law for a girly break, and we all had a lovely couple of days stitching. I had been hoping to be able to show what I'd done, but it's not finished yet, so I'll save it for another day.

This is the group, engrossed in their projects...


And some of Kate's work - she kindly gave permission for me to show these here.


The instructions for a picture similar to this one of delphiniums and daisies, appeared in Stitch magazine, Issue 41.


A small wallhanging...


and a much larger one, about 4ft long...


Some of the detail...


This was the sales table!


Hands up who would have been able to resist all the pretty colours...


Nope? Me neither!

Stitchfest

This is the long overdue second instalment of my catch-up!

Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th April was the Stitchfest Exhibition in Aberdeen and a weekend full of textiles, friends and laughter - just what I needed...

It's not a huge exhibition compared to the national ones (and probably tiny compared with those in the US), but still a tremendous undertaking for the people involved. The majority of the work on display was patchwork and quilting. This is some of the work of City & Guilds students...

... And this is a wallhanging of the four seasons by local school children aged 5-12.

And a bit more detail... The photo is a but blurry, but the colours were fantastic.

These are a few of the textile pictures from the Children's Competition.

It was pretty hard to choose one to vote for, and the one I chose isn't shown here, but it was by a little boy who had formed the mountains using trapunto - very clever!

Here's my Tower alongside some of the other Betty's Challenge pieces. It eventually raised £50 for Macmillan Cancer Support, so I was pretty pleased.

More Betty's Challenge - it was amazing how many different items there were and how many different colour schemes from one basic fabric. More details about the challenge already posted here.

It was also ATC group, so I popped out for a couple of hours to go to that - April swaps are below. Still one space to fill but I'm hoping LL will help me out with that! Theme for May is "Favourite Colour" which gives plenty of scope except that I don't really have one!

Helen Cowans was also up in Aberdeen at the weekend, teaching a workshop on her Towers of Flowers. I couldn't go, but went along on Sunday to see what the ladies had been up to. Lots more Towers created, each different from the rest. I think the black one on the end will be stunning when it's finished, as well as HUGE! I'd love to make an attempt on one that tall, but at the moment, I think if I made a start it would be forever destined to be a UFO!

Helen also brought along her new Gothic mini towers - which again are beautiful. She did let me take photos, and gave me permission to show them here. My photo doesn't do them justice at all - I've not managed to show how the light catches them, but you can see more information about them on Helen's blog here.


I've spent the last couple of days on a Creative Emboidery workshop with Kathryn Slaughter of Kate's Kloths. Need to do a bit more stitching before I can show what we did...

Catching Up

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, so I need to do a bit of a catch-up. Last weekend was our EG Branch Display of Work. There were a few sleepless nights for the committee, worrying about whether it would be a success, but we needn’t have worried.

There were more than enough pieces to show with pretty much every technique covered from stumpwork, goldwork, crewel embroidery, doll making, beading… the list goes on. Lots of beautiful pieces of work, with some of the most impressive coming from those who are very modest about their talents. This is just a very small taster of what was on show.

The sales table was also pretty impressive, stocked as it was by donations from members.
This is my haul for the day:

Books:
Faces & Figures in Embroidery – Valerie Campbell-Harding
Embroidered Boxes – Jane Lemon
Needleweaving – Edith John
Blackwork Embroidery – Elisabeth Geddes and Moyra McNeill
Pulled Thread – Moyra McNeill
Misc:
Two packets beads
Two ring sticks (for making couronnes – will be much easier than a pencil)
Omnigrid

I do feel twinges of guilt at having bought all of this – especially after reading Paula’s post on Affluenza on her Beauty of Life Blog. I’ve long thought that we’d all be much better off and much happier with less stuff and clutter in all aspects of life. However, I’m justifying this in that I’m RECYCLING things that might otherwise have been thrown out, they were probably about a quarter of the price they would have been new, and if I achieve my ambition to study City & Guilds in Creative Embroidery, then I’ll need them! I also donated some of the books that I no longer use, so there was a space on the book shelf…

Then, my friend gave me some Czech glass beads she’d brought back from a trip to Prague! (Thank you LL – they’re lovely!) The photo doesn’t do the colours justice at all. I’ve got something in mind to use them on, but might not happen for a while.

During the week I finished off my ATCs for the group I’ve joined. I had two themes to work on this month – Spring and April.

This is the Spring ATC. Commercial patchwork fabric, with machine and hand couched threads, machine and hand stitching, brought fabric flowers attached with some beads and a little flower brad. The quotation is printed on an acetate sheet and stitched on. The full quotation is “Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart” by Victor Hugo

I spent so much time stitching the Spring ATC, that I didn’t leave much time for April, but I knew I wanted something to do with April Showers. I’ve cheated a bit in that the background is scrapbooking paper and paper made from cotton rags stitched together. The collage images were downloaded from DigitalCollageSheets.com and printed on to pelmet Vilene, then a piece of lace was added and a decorative machine stitch added round the outside. My first two attempts! To be continued...