Life's a bleach!

I am very excited to be offering workshops at Textiles In Focus at Cottenham Village College in February 2014. This is a great event which I have attended as a visitor for several years. The programme comes out around Christmas time http://www.textilesinfocus.co.uk.

I will be doing a two-hour workshop called 'Life's a bleach!' - using discharging paste and household bleach to remove colour from black and pre-dyed cloth. It can be a bit smelly but the results can be great.

Bleach on black linen

Discharge paste on black linen

The 2 combined with added stitch

Texture Adventures Workshop

I taught a 'Texture Adventures' workshop to a group of lovely WI ladies in Ipswich on Saturday.

This technique uses a large print cotton fabric, layered up with several sheers, then stitched and cut away to create a textured piece ready to be framed. The plan is to have a contrast between the smooth shiny motifs and a textured background which has lots of added machine and hand stitching.

Seven ladies went home with an 8" piece ready to frame

Out of the Fold exhibition

Out of the Fold always sets a challenge or theme for each exhibition and the one for the recent exhibition held in Bury St Edmunds was 'Finer Focus'. Three related pieces were all to made from recycled calico coffin covers. 'Finer Focvs' being an anagram of 'Coffin Covers'

I must say that I have loved working with the soft unbleached calico of the covers which were stamped as above with the Ecoffins logo and also with the legend 'FRAGILE DO NOT STACK'

The calico dyed wonderfully and resulted in a soft warm tone.

'Someone's father, someone's son' - my Finer Focus piece

 I worked with the full length of each coffin cover - which vary according to the size of the contents - and wanted to make a sombre piece in keeping with the source of the fabric. Each length was dyed, the wording then stamped very simply with acrylic paint, then stitched by machine. The Finer Focus theme came from highlighting that in the long list of names on my 'roll' of cloth that each one of those names was an individual and someone's father, husband, brother or son.

Finer Focus - British panel(detail)

The first panel I made was one showing a long list of British first names. This was dyed using a grey Procion dye to suggest stone.

Finer Focus - German panel(detail)

It was listening to radio 4 whilst stitching the English panel above when I heard a programme talking about a memorial being planned to commemorate the centenary of the first world war where the fallen of all nations are to be honoured. This led to me thinking about the Finer Focus piece in a wider way and led to the making of the second panel using German names and highlighting 'Sohn (son)' 'Ehemann (husband)' 'Vater' and 'Bruder'  within the text in red. This panel was tea-dyed.

Finer Focus - the Western Front(detail)

 The last panel was done in haste with the exhibition deadline fast approaching and was stamped more sparsely with the names of battles fought on the Western front between 1914 and 1918. The fabric was washed and dyed after stamping and stitching to give the weathered appearance of stone.

This series could go on - panels featuring the names of Italians, Russians, Australians......9 million men died in WW1 alone. Or the theme could come forward or back in time. History has never been short of battles or lives lost.  

Kerry's First quilt - ever!

I ran an absolute beginners workshop at The Cosy Cabin  recently to make a 36" x 36" lap quilt using the nice and easy Strip Rail block. I was delighted when Kerry, who had never done any patchwork before, sent me a picture of her finished quilt - she has now made 2 more baby quilts. Didn't she do well?

 

Kerry Welch's First Quilt

So if you have been on any of my workshops and have images of finished items to send me I will be delighted to post them onto the copperqueen blog

If you would like to see what other courses are being offered at the Cosy Cabin click here www.thecosycabin.co.uk

 

Tin Hut Textiles Exhibition

The recent exhibition by Tin Hut Textiles held at the Cinema Gallery in Aldeburgh went very well.
I am just one of the eight very talented members of THT and this was our first major exhibition.

The theme of the show was 'First Elements' and we had chosen 'Copper' to showcase our skills this time. All 8 members had the challenge of making a piece with Copper as the theme and to a standard size of 12" x 24" and mounted onto a canvas.

3 of the 'Copper' pieces by Marie Limb (left) and Marion Barnes (right) with me in the middle

'Decay' was another theme chosen and each Tin Hut Textiles member had to make a piece with this theme 9" wide but at any length. As you can see the results are as varied as the personalities of the makers.

'Decay' pieces by Annette Morgan, Marie Limb, Me, Marion Barnes and Cynthia Thomson as seen left to right

Our final group display was one using Ufford Church as the inspiration as the group meets in the Village Hall (with the distinctive tin roof which gives the group it's name) next to this lovely church. Each if chose a part of the church or churchyard and made a wallhanging 18" x 24"

Below is Janina Moore's  lovely delicate piece based on some stone carving in the church

Janina Moore

'Ufford Church' by Cynthia Thomson, Mary Mcintosh and Annette Morgan

The next Tin Hut Textiles Exhibition will be as part of the City & Guilds Graduate Show inn Wickham Market on Sat 28th and Sun 29th June 2014 where our next element will be.......... 'Silver'

Paper Mania Day

The Paper Mania Workshop at the WI in Ipswich on Sat 28th Sept seemed to go quite well. We had 9 lovely ladies putting together collages of painted newspapers in their chosen colour and then adding layers of sheers and stitching by machine before burning away the layers to reveal some for the paper below.   It was quite challenging for those who had never free-machined before but everyone produced a piece to take home to be framed. Here are just some of the pieces.......

Paper Mania Day on Sat 28th September in Ipswich - Barbara's piece

Paper Mania 

New Sampler Quilt Course at the Cosy Cabin

I started teaching a sampler course at the new quilt shop The Cosy Cabin at Risby Barns near Bury St Edmunds this week. This is a 12 week course, running on Thursdays from 10am - 4pm, to make a full size (96" x 96") bed quilt. 16 different quilt blocks.

We started nice and simple with 2 strip piecing blocks. Watch this blog over the next 12 weeks to see how the sampler quilts take shape. If you would like to join the class then please contact the Cosy Cabin on 01284 811222

Block 1 - Rail fence - student's own fabrics

Block 2 - Strip Rail using Shabby Chic range