Hello Sunshine!!! I can't believe this weekend is wonderful, sunshine and real warmth, and the garden is cheering up no end. I took a Sunday stroll around Gill Acres this afternoon and thought you might like to see how the rockery beneath my sewing room window is shaping up; the crocus have it to themselves at the moment but it won't be long before more colour blossoms forth.
Yesterday was just as lovely, weatherwise, and Yvonne and I sped across-county to Swanton Novers to spend the day at Jane-Ann's studio taking part in a wonderful workshop with Mandy Pattullo. If you have never seen her work, do google her name and see her original and stunning textiles. The workshop Mandy taught us was The Enchanted Forest, and is a fabric collage technique using pieces of vintage patchwork quilt as the background, or pieces of vintage sheet, 'altered' with emulsion paint and embellished with image transfer flower sprigs. An outline of our chosen animal or bird was traced onto our background pieces, and collaged and stitched to give a very impressionistic idea of the original drawing.
Herr are a few photographs of Mandy's work - excuse the poor quality of photo as the pieces were mounted and wrapped and the light bounced around a bit!
This hare is my favourite and I was very tempted to buy it, but Mandy told me to hang on as I might want to make my own version! And she was right. I have (with permission) traced her template and intend to have a go at it myself. I did manage to come home with the one similar to the stag above.
So here are some initial shots and a few of how our worked had progressed when we packed in at the close of workshop. We all have work to do before completing our pieces, but I think we all came away quite pleased with ourselves and impressed with our progress.
My photocopy of a drawing from a beautiful book, but I have forgotten the details!
Yvonne gets cracking with transferring her image to her piece of altered sheet.
I have selected my fabrics and cut and pinned them. It was surprisingly intense work!
Jane-Ann is pinning her tiny pieces to her fox mask outline.
Red is at the selection and first pinning stage here.
Fen has chosen to work with altered sheeting, like Yvonne, and has stitched her outline and begun pinning.
Me , beginning to stitch, close-up.
Pauline is working on sheeting, and has an outline of a photograph of one of her beautiful Haflinger horses, who I showed you in the Open Studios post last year. Below you can see how she had progressed by the end of the workshop.. She is choosing to work mostly with stitch in her piece.
And here are the final photographs. We all have more to do at home - this is very intensive work!
Fen's owl
Red's hare
Yvonne's hare
Sharon's bird
Jane-Ann's fox
My hare.
Close-up of my hare. Some seed-heads to be stitched on the quilt as well.
And there we have it, a very full day's work, in wonderful surroundings, and we had gorgeous weather to boot. If you get the chance to do a Mandy Pattullo workshop - jump at it, she is an extremely interesting woman, excellent tutor and very generous of her time, fabric stash, and images!
Enjoy the weather too, I think it is with us for another week.... oh to be in England now that some sunshine is here...or words to that effect!
