Magic needles

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Saturday 27th July

Saturday saw the second of our two workshops with Kathryn Thompson, doll-maker, sewing teacher and all-together lovely lady.  As we unpacked assorted body parts, Kathryn was keen to check that we had completed our homework and that everyone had achieved the correct amount of stuffing.  No time for idle chit-chat, we were soon attaching limbs to torsos using some scarily big needles.

If we had thought that fingers were difficult, nothing had prepared us for heads and faces.  First we were given a refresher course in drawing and the relative proportions of eyes, noses and mouths.  We needed a few practice runs on plain paper before we were let loose on cloth.  Once we had stuffed the heads, making sure that noses remained filled with polyester, we traced an outline of the face onto the head using a soft brown pencil.  Taking another magic needle and some strong thread, we followed a doll-maker's version of join-the-dots adding little stitches here and there to give contours to the face - bringing it to life.

Now Kathryn has been making dolls for many years and she has amassed a vast array of coloured pencils, pigment pens, gel pens and other mark-making tools that she uses to create faces.  None of this is any good without years of experience colouring faces.  And so we came to her with our pudgy dolls heads, with their asymmetric features caused by inexpert stitching and with a few stokes of a pencil she had transformed them into glorious personalities.

With heads attached, we could now see the possibilities of our dolls.  Miss Haversham emerged with greying locks, a Geisha sat serenely in the corner, an ice maiden glistened with glitter pen make-up and a Spring sprite suddenly adopted hair which Amy Winehouse would have been proud of!

Our dolls are not quite finished but the photo shows what can be achieved with some magic needles and a very good teacher.  Thank you Kathryn!

Places and the Stitches Between

(Photos taken and reproduced with the permission of Hannah Lamb. Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 15th July 

This month, Saltaire-based artist Hannah Lamb took us on a journey through her inspiration for her collections of textile art. From early days as an graduate from Manchester Metropolitan University, producing exquisite vessels out of vintage gloves and then as a designer-maker creating quirky pincushions to hold a collection of found objects. Her decision to study for a Masters degree gave new confidence to her practise and this shows in her choice of materials and experimental approach to printing and dying.

Our branch meetings can often result in a busy exchange of information, but Hannah's quiet approach brought instant calm to the afternoon.  She is an advocate of walking for meditation and as a creative source of inspiration and this has been the driving force for her most recent work.  The leaves she collects from a nearby wood provide both colour and stencils for a Shibori style of dying.  She even notices the weeds that grow between cracks in the pavement and elevates them to high status objects when she creates cyanotype prints on cloth or postcards.

Her stitching adds emphasis to her work: small button-hole stitch around a vintage broderie-anglaise top in just the right shade of citrus tells you that she is looking for signs of spring.  This work formed part of her collection "In Search of Green" which was recently on show at The Bowery in Headingly.  But it was the intensely personal work "Visible Mending" that she created for an exhibition of War at the Yorkshire Craft Centre, Bradford that resonated with me.  The piece reflected the wartime experiences of her grandmother and great uncle by the use of two different forms of stitching that took place during the Second World War:  traditional embroidery depicting an idealised English cottage and garden that was issued to service personnel for recreation and the utilitarian darning that was necessary to keep clothing wearable in POW camps.

It was a great pleasure to spend the afternoon in the company of such an inspirational tutor.

Model Students

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Saturday 6th July 2013

This weekend we welcomed back Kathryn Thompson for another fantastic workshop.  We are making a "Sewing Sprite" - an art doll by any other name.  Kathryn dispenses pearls of wisdom and hard earned experience in equal measure and you always learn something new!

There was a lot to pack into the day and we had been given homework to prepare beforehand.  Very soon small, shapely legs started to appear around the room, brought to life by copious amounts of polyester stuffing and clever use of surgical-issue haemostats.  Once Kathryn was satisfied that we had achieved the correct level of firmness (and no cellulite) we moved on to the body. This was more straightforward but given a quirky twist by the application of snippets of selvedge to add an interesting detail to the bodice.

After lunch we tackled the bit that had all been dreading- hands with FINGERS!  Kathryn was kind and gave us a choice of hands with varying degrees of difficulty but several brave souls tackled the full five-finger option.  The finger-turning tools took some getting use to but once we had mastered the technique little hands  were not as difficult as we imagined.

We have been sent away to continue stuffing and to make a head.  The workshop recommences on Saturday 27th of July.