EG Summer School

I I went to Wooler last week on an Embroiderers' Guild Summer School. The course I did was called Limited Editions and Val Stoddart was the tutor. It was a bit of a leap of faith for me as I had no idea what sort of work Val did but it included machine embroidery and the embellisher and for me that was great. I tried to find some of Val's work on the web but could have saved my energies as Val is doesn't have a computer and is very anti-www. We tried but we couldn't get her to change her mind.

The whole course as based on making a sketch book with holes in it to peep through. Val had seen the Picture House exhibition at Belsay and was intrigued with 'holes' that showed limited views. We had to make a 3D structure made from mount board, shown above, and we were not allowed to glue anything. I had to make holes in the card with an awl so I could sew the background onto the structure using beads. My fingers were sore but I liked the effect so thought it well worth the effort.



We also had to make books with holes in to view the embellished backgrounds through, I made two one a two-fold book and the second (below) with three pages of holes. Not so sure about these as I cannot cut a straight line to save my life. Both books had the same embellished background but the smaller two-fold one had some beads added. By the time I got home I was well behind with some of my swaps but also well into using my embellisher so I completed a cutwork swap making two small coin purses. I used felt as the background then needlepunched a blue fibrous paper onto it. It was a bit hard and I'm not sure I would do it again as I broke two needles doing it. The edges had a wool ribbon felted on, the last of the bits I got from Val. I started felting the edges together but for some reason my Babylock embellisher does not like me felting edges, the needles wobble and I was afraid I was going to break more needles so I used buttonhole stitch and some beads.

I was quite pleased with the finished result and think a slightly smaller version could be made as a card wallet.

Tomorrow I'm going with my dh when he see the neurosurgeon about the lump on his spine that's trapping his sciatic nerve. I do hope something can be done for him as he's a great workstop and it'll take me forever to catch up with all the jobs I still haven't done.