Taking it a step further!

Yesterday I went to a workshop. The workshop was being held at Hastings Art Forum, a super little gallery right on the seafront at St. Leonards on Sea. I like it there, because they have a healthy respect for textile artists. In fact the workshop I attended, Textured Landscapes by Catherine Lawes, was being run as part of the annual textile exhibition, this year entitled Ebb and Flow.

There were upwards of a dozen of us. Catherine had provided us with all the materials and equipment we needed. We each had an identical "starter pack" of fabrics and there was a huge pile of threads to choose from. We were using a photograph of cranberry fields as inspiration and although there were many unfinished pieces it was clear that despite working from the same source and using identical fabrics they were all going to be completely different.

I'm not going to show the techniques as I learned them in the workshop because that would be a violation of copyright, but this is what I came home with:

Any one that knows me, knows that for me it's all about the STITCH! While I was doing this, I was already thinking about taking it further by mangling it through the embellisher and stitching on top. Maybe it was the cranberry colours. I was thinking about this piece I did a while ago:

Here's a close-up.

So, today I put my workshop piece through the embellisher.

Here it is, mangled and ready for another layer of stitching.

and here's the back.

I remembered the cranberries from the original source photograph, so I've just made some felt beads.

There should be some progress to post in a couple of days - when I've had some fun with it!

Here's the link to Hastings Art Forum
and this is where you can find Catherine Lawes