Taking textiles further with Alysn Midgelow Marsden

I love being able to play with a new technique, try things out, see how they work and then see what happens when you change things. Well that is exactly what you get to do on a workshop with Alysn Midgelow Marsden.

I first met Alysn at the Wolverhampton Branch of the Embroiderers Guild (where I am currently Chair) several years ago. I am not sure exactly of the timing but it was just before or just after she moved to New Zealand.  I remember being sad at the time that I thought I wouldnt be able to do any more workshops with her (as I did pod making but that is a story for a different post).  However, with her parents still living in Derby Alysn has run workshops in a local hall there ever since (on her annual trips home) and I have been going along and disrupting her class every year.

She calls these classes "Taking Textiles Further" and thats what you do - learn a technique and then see how you want to take it further.This year was split into to 2 seperate classes - the space between and Autumn surfaces.

The Space Between

We started with gathering up natural materials from the gardens outside and then using them to make drawings. This is not my drawing but from one of the extension exercises we did. Isn't it just fab?! I can see lots of ways to use that.

 Once we had done the drawings we looked at ways to abstract them.

the outline of one of my drawings - it looks like Mickey Mouse I think

Then I copied an overlapped it and traced off another outline to make this long piece 

 Once we had a set of new abstract drawings we used them to make stamps in stick on foam (that stuff you buy for kids) and we did a lot of printing on to paper and fabric to try them out.

this is me doing free machine embroidery onto one of my stitched pieces .

 Of course I didnt go off to this course alone - I toook my Posse with me. Don't they look happy?

The photographer in the group surprised to have her photo taken!

having a ponder about what to do next

 I like to make lots of different samples on a course like this - I think you learn more that way, plus if one piece is a disaster you have plenty more to play with.  So in recent years I have come up with more ideas of ways to join the little pieces together.

This is what I ended up with this year - a long thin strip  (had to take 2 shots to get it all in). You can see the variations on a them - some currently with embroidery and some without. I will need to spend a large amount of time stitching in order to get them all finished. I have set myself the challenge of getting them all done before the next class in October. It sounds very achieveable but I have a bad habit on taking on more and more work......

the little stamp on the fabric to remind me that I think I need another small piece in order to make the whole thing work.

machine embroidery and seed stitch - trying it ou

lots of machine embroidery

Autumn surfaces. 

The first class was very much design orientated. This one was about playing with the materials.  See that square in the top right hand piece (yup, back to multiple pieces even at the design stage) - that is   shrink plastic sewn with threads and then zapped with a heat gun. Who knew how much fun that was? 

 I pinched the felt from one of my friends because it went perfectly with the wool tops I had to embellish on.  Then we had pieces of shrink plastic printed with autumn leave patterns. When you zap them they curl up in a crazy way til they finally have finished shrinking and go flat. This is a before and after shot so  you can see how much they shrink and how intense the colours get.

 Here I am messing around with the layout.  Trying out ideas.

 We also used aluminium coffee pods to make metal enhanced surfaces, and I had also added in some lutrador I had coloured and distressed with Alysn last year.

 Then some leaves were printed onto Kraftex paper - it is soft to the touch, more like leather than paper.

 The whole thing is gradually built up piece by piece.  There were a lot of interesting "things" on the tables that people had bought along so I scrounged another couple of metal leaves.

 This is where I got to by the end of the second day. Now I need to give it some thinking time and then finish it off. The hardest bit is deciding how I will display it. I need to think about that first as it will have a huge effect on how I put it together.

 And finally some shots of the other students work - always interesting to see how different they all are.

thanks for reading this.

Little Rotters!

What a title for a talk! When I saw this advertised in the programme of the Gardening Club I knew I had to pop along and see what it was all about. Turns out to be a playdate with fungi.


This lovely lady is Sue Shanks (whom I work with on an occassionaly basis - ecologist by training and now an environmental educator. We both work at a Wildlife centre)

 And she bought with her loads of different mushrooms - the fruiting bodies of fungi. These are Fly Agaric - the most common for fairy tales and pretty cards. They are also hallucinogenic and make Reindeer high as a kite when they eat them - hence the stories of flying reindeer.

 Once we had been given the basic identification skills (well as much as you can in 20 minutes) we got to work with the speicimens.  The underside gills are just beautiful to me and the part I was fascinated by in the Fascinating Fungi workhshops.

This one was a bit ripe and stinky! We even had a free maggot. The spine was very knobbly too.

Sue showed us spore prints - you take them by removing the stalk and lying the mushroom cap gill side down on a piece of paper. Leave it overnight in a warm room and this is what you get. I have just got to try this out for myself. I can feel myself itching to stitch this.

With white spores it pays to use a coloured paper.

This one had tubes instead of gills - giving it a very spongey texture. The bottom smelt like earth but the top smelt of cats pee.  Apparently smell is a key diagnostic feature.....Hummmmm

After a while it looked like mushroom carnage!

The pink veining round the top of this one was very pretty. Its quite a chunky little thing.

The milk caps - if you damage the gills they produce milk - orange milk in this case. I thought the caps were just pretty in themselves. My fascination with gills again.

Lots of the samples came complete with soil, twigs, moss etc. They were mini works of art in their own right.  Yet another thing added to my "one day" list - to make more 3D mushrooms and make them more realistic.

Who thought so many varieties could be found in a short distance round Wolverhampton? This is just a very small selection of the ones Sue bought.  Events like this spark my creativity and really make me want to get creating- even if I could never compete with Mother Nature.

Making a Japanese Spine Bound Book - the hard way

I have been a member of Bilston Craft Group for a couple of years now and evey now and then we have a workshop with a bought in tutor, instead of one of us teaching.  This month we were making Japanese Spine Bound Books.

I meant to take pictures as I was going along but it took so much concentration that I didnt even think about it. So I am afraid all you get is the final work. 

We started with a piece of mountcard and some leave,  which we glued onto said mount card to make a printing plate.  Then we brayered black acrylic paint over the leaves and pressed the printing plate onto the fabric. I rubbed the back of my fabric with my hands to get a good impression.  Because acrylic is fast drying by the time I had done the basic covers the fabric was ready to stitch.

We made the covers by cutting the front one and inserting a masking tape "spine" (so the front will bend. Next time I will do the same to the back) then we drilled holes through both covers and the pages (I think I would do this a bit at a time).  The important bit here is to hold everything together with several elastic bands so it cant move!

I enjoyed sewing the fabric,a quiet hour out from the hectic concentration of making the basic book.  I seem to be in a fairly minimalist phrase at the moment (VERY unusual for me) and decided just to stitch one leaf and some seed stitch (in the same colour as the fabric) around it. This adds texture without being "shouty" if you know what I mean?  There is just one bead. That was added for my friend who was with me - she was about to send for an ambulance as I wasn't doing bright colours, mega bling and loads of stitch. Well we all fancy a change every now and then.

The trickiest part was wrapping the fabric round the hard covers and sticking it down. Just about everyone else had a fairly random pattern on their fabric but I needed my main leaf to be top right third. If there is a hard way I will find it!  So it took me a long time and a lot of fiddling to get it right. I have decided that next time I would use spray glue not double sided sticky tape to fasten the fabric because it should be easier to line up.

The finishing touch was to thread the ribbon through. I was feeling very impressed with myself until I got to the end, Pulled the ribbon tight....and it snapped 😒.  By this time I was getting a bit tired and if I am honest a little cross. So after a bit of under the breath swearing I employed my key skill - improvisation - and wrapped the ribbon round to the back and glued it down. Thank goodness for multipurpose glue. It has saved my bacon on more than one occassion.

Can you see the mistake in the finished book? The masking tape spine has collapsed making the front cover shorter than the back. I am going to colour in the edges of the paper (more improvisation) and then no-one but you will know that it was a mistake.

The whole session reminded me how much I love book making, and of course the first version of any book is always the hardest but stitched covers really appeal to me.  I would love to make more of these and as I have some mount card and paper precut next time I get a free day I am good to go.   As I want to practice on my home made printing press this seems like a good way of combining two things.

The Pros and Cons of hosting an Open Studio

Back after a long break.....

Sorry to say the Blog has been somewhat neglected over the summer.  This year with the Bee project, Fascinating Fungi and more I have struggled to get the sewing done, and blogging about it has gone by the board. Things should calm down a little now so I am going to try harder to get on here more regularly.

The weekend just gone was Wolverhampton Society of Artists Open Studio this weekend. They open it up for all artists in the area not just those in the Society so myself and my 3 friends that make up Sisters of Stitch (SOS) decided we would dip our toes in the water, so to speak, and exhibit.

The first issue is always going to be where to exhibit? We could have hired a stand in the local centre (where a lot of artists have studios anyway) but that would have only given us 2 small display boards for the 4 of us plus an additional charge on top on the entry fee. Given that I have a large home studio anyway (lucky lucky me!) the sensible solution seemed obvious - use my studio. The downside - it was cluttered beyond belief, I have 2 dogs who would love to cuddle every person arriving, and a family who didn't really want their home invaded for a whole weekend.  After a debate we decided we could build a temporary blockade so that people could only get into the first room in the house - my studio - and the family/dogs etc could be safely left to their weekend in the rest of the house. The clutter could move into the spare room - well behind the barricade.

Next was the tricky issue of sales. 

The sales table

We had made lots of work in the past two years and plenty of it was good enough to sell but would that look too commercial / greedy? Our primary aim was to showcase our work so we didn't want selling to be a distraction. In the end we prices on items we didn't mind rehoming and not on our favourite pieces that we weren't ready to part with.

There is a whole minefield around pricing - not to undersell yourself for the hours of making and skill building but not to outprice the market. We must have got it about right  because we did a good steady trade but not the feeding frenzy it would have been if we had priced too low.

We split the work up into different areas - to give it some consistency because we all have vastly different styles.  Anne clearly loves the sea and her work just naturally came together

Anne's Sea themed corner

The organza work hanging in the window to let the light through

 

I have always thought my work was the most eclectic of our group but when we started to hang them it became obvious that nearly all of my work is inspired by nature in some way. It was lovely to realise that I have more of a style than I thought I did

More nature pieces in the other corner

We have done a couple of joint projects in the 2 years we have been meeting. It was lovely to put them out on display too. The orange dress in the background was my contribution to a joint project in another group Connect in Threads. I loved making it and couldnt resist giving it another airing.  I have been asked why I dont make it wearable but it is 2 sizes too big for me, not constructed properly for dress making and would take WAY too much effort to do. So it just hangs and looks pretty.

the joint projects of 2018/2019

We were worried before we started that we wouldnt have any visitors - we were competing after all with the Art Centre and its myriad artists. It was a pleasant surprise to have a steady stream of visitors both days. On Saturday I think we had about 35 and we would have been pushed to cope with more.  Everyone said lovely complimentary things and it is so good to have time to discuss your work in detail. Better yet, some of the visitors were people we didn't know, so it wasnt just family and friends supporting us.

Overall it was a lot of hard work. The first time you do anything like this you have to plan it all out and prepare and you are never quite sure what to expect. we had to work out the logistics of how to get things up on display boards we had never used before and how we would manage the health and safety aspects.

We sat and had a little review at the end; concluding that it was worth it for the chance to talk about our textile obession with all the lovely people who showed up; for the way it made us finish our WIPS (work in progress) and for the unexpected benefit of getting a review of all we have been up to in the last 2 years.

Now I have to put my studio back together again. I liked it clean and tidy with empty surfaces. Maybe it will motivate to decide what I really need to keep out of the mountain in the spare room.....

The Festival of Quilts 2019

The summer has been flying by in a blur of grandchildren, gardening and getting ready for a couple of exhibitions.

One of the highlights of my summer is always the Festival of Quilts at the NEC. Since we moved to the Midlands four years ago it is relatively cheap and easy for me to get to, making it a must on my summer calendar.

 This year I was lucky enough to host Margaret Beale for a lecture and workshop at my Branch of the Embroiderers Guild. Margaret is a lovely lady and we had a great chat in the evening. As a thank you for providing the B&B she gave me a complimentary ticket to the show so it cost me almost nothing to go - bargin!

I have taken a while to process the whole experience. There is always so much to see and take in, too much for one day really. I start early but am always visually overwhelmed by mid afternoon. In the last couple of years I have developed a strategy to try and get the most of the exhibition before I hit overload. I "scoot round" really quickly first for about an hour and make a mental note of anything that catches my eye. Then I go back round more slowly looking in detail at those exhibits. I realise I might miss a few gems with this system but realistically I can't cover the whole of such a huge show in one day and this means I get to look more closely at things I am instinctively drawn too (and therefore I hope things that fit with my style and practice).

So what caught my eye this year?

Surface design is always going to get my attention as I am constantly fascinated by how we can change the look of the fabric. This example was particularly yummy don't you think?

Maps, paper, distressing are also themes that are calling my name at the moment so I loved the display of map clothes.

The detailed surface was amazing close up. I loved the holes in it and the fragile feel of the whole piece.

This way of displaying a group of pieces was interesting. it allowed you to see all of them and the inter-relationships between them. The view changed depending on where you stood.

Sandra Meech had a lovely stand, with a lot of work from her trips to the Artic. I love her book with this work in (it was one of the first books on textile art that inspired me). It was fantastic to see all this work close up and to have a chance to chat to her.

I would like to develop more work on paper so of course I was drawn to her "sketches" which have all sorts of interesting things added to them.

Then there were the gorgeous quilts with photos and text

When I looked through my photos I am also clearly attracted to lots of images collected together to make a larger image. 

There seemed to be more embroidery than ever this year. Since I mainly work in embroidery/mixed media it naturally catches my eye. This next photo doesn't do justice to the piece which was just jaw dropping in its complex over lay of stitches. I think it might be a bit "marmite" but I really wished I had the budget to buy it (not much makes me want to part with my cash nowadays on a tight budget)

I thought this poem stitched into a weaving was a novel approach. I liked the fact the words weren't obvious so you had to get up close and pay attention to read them. 

With my current dressmaking obession I had to visit the Fashion section. Took me a while to find it tucked away and I was beginning to panic that there wasn't one this year.  This next picture is the work  from 2018 that made me think about combining dressmaking and textile techniques to make "wearable art".

 I think the same person must have made the Tudor jacket this year because of the similarity in style. The level of detailing is superb and the overall feel is of luxury and elegance.

The final photo I want to show is one I took to remind me NOT to try and make everything match. The purple section on this is something I wouldn't think to do but it really lifts the piece and if you take it out the whole thing goes a bit flat. Sometimes we need a touch of courage don't we?

Not to mention the level of skill in making the whole piece.

I took less photos than usual this year but there were still a lot. Again I have realised that if I take pictures of everything that catches my eye I don't go back and look at them. Much better to focus on the things that stand out above everything else.

So this was my slightly quirky tiny tour of what is an amazing show. If you get the chance to go next year I would recommend it as there will be something to impress you no matter what your textile taste. Oh and I got dress making fabric too but that's for another post. ( and hopefully not such a big gap to the next one)

Thanks for reading.