Christmas Decorations with a Difference

Another productive day at Bassingham, experimenting with bonding 'toppings' on to Vilene. Lots of hearts and stars - the black ones are very striking, but they are all gorgeous and all the best-dressed trees will be wearing them!

Happy Christmas ...

Book Covers at Bassingham

Everyone worked really hard on Saturday and some lovely book covers were produced. It was lovely to see work from previous workshops being incorporated.

Not all were finished, but well on the way. Some diddy ones were made too, which will make nice covers for mini-books or credit card holders.

We'll be making Christmas decorations in the next workshop on 24th November - using pelmet vilene and transfoils.

Burned Out at Bassingham

Yesterday we had a day experimenting with the soldering iron. Amazing results again. And so different, given everyone starts at the same place with the same technique. I do look forward to these workshops and watching everyone experiment.

I shouldn't have used the flasn on the camera as it's distorted the colours, but you get the idea.

Zena used a chicken wire mesh to get these designs

Val used a coin - must be careful, metal gets very hot! Sorry about the colours, my camera doesn't like pink! The photo doesn't do this one justice.

Sue layers lots of little bits to get an interesting surface.

Pauline has used several layers of organza, scored a grid design with the soldering iron and then made marks in some of the squares.

Kate burned holes in each piece of organza and then piled them on top of each other - nice seeing the ways the colours change as you look into it.

Another piece from Sue - lots of different marks
We were talking about other Blogspots - Maggie Grey's is http://magstitch.blogspot.com/

More Tissue Textures

Thanks to Zena, Val, and Pauline for bringing their Tissue Textures back for me to photograph. I'm afraid that the photos do not really do them justice. It's so nice to see the results. Alison has some lovely work in progress too - so perhaps a picture of that another time.

Zena's design started from one of the Medieval tile designs, and she's added hand embroidery to develop the design further.


Val's is a fragmentof a tile, the colours work really well together. She painted the background purple and then tea-dyed it before outlining with gold thread and embellishing with beads.

Pauline also started with a Medieval tile design which she has repeated and rotated. They look stunning in black and white - the stitching is in red and orange by hand & machine. They have been mounted on painted pelment vilene which has been printed with a 'text' stamp and hand drawn letters - stunning!

Another one from Pauline, based on one of the Lewis chessmen. You can see the texture of the tissue in this one. Cut out with a soldering iron.

Thank you for sharing them.

Crazy Patchwork

The next Dunholme Workshop (24th August) will be at home at Sudbrooke again.

We'll be decorating patchwork blocks with hand embroidery. It's a simple technique that can produce stunning results just by combining stitches.

The photo is a book cover I made using crazy patchwork. Click for a closer view.

Medieval Tiles

I'm enjoying playing with the tile designs. Have done another one today. The watercolour works well. Used gold thread to outline the shapes

Tissue Textures Workshop

I really enjoyed the workshop on Saturday. We experimented with tissue and acrylic felt. The design is drawn on to the tissue and coloured with crayons or paint and then applied to the felt with Bondaweb.

Some lovely designs - but I forgot to take photos. So if you came to the workshop please send me your photos and I'll post them on the blog.

I've continued working on the sample I started at the workshop. It's based on a medieval tile pattern, coloured with wax crayons, coffee dyed and painted over with watercolour to bring out the colour more. I have hand stitched and outlined the shape with a soldering iron.

Here's the other one - still working on it.