Rockpool Stitchscape Class

I've had some fabulous workshops recently!! These photos are from the Rockpool Stitchscape workshop at Made & Making a couple of weeks ago (everything is a couple of weeks ago - where on earth does the time go!! These photos have been sitting in my drafts for ages.)

What I love about this class over a creative Stitchscape class is that it is all about the texture. It's about stitching down shells and felt rocks and just stuffing any little hole with trimmings - destroying them or cutting into them, looping them... basically creating texture as much as you can. 

Those in the class can choose how they want to add their shells and what scene to add them into, whether it's a sandy beach, a sea scene with cliffs and some shells, the shoreline or, in this case, a pond! For the above piece, a lot of the fabrics were turned over so that the reverse was showing, making the colours a little bit muted, and then she absolutely went to town with adding 'stuff'. There's a fabulous big eroded shell which had some holes through the centre so it was easy to stitch down in place over felt rocks she made. I take furnishing tassel trimmings to these classes because you can twist them and stitch them down to look like seaweed or sea urchins and she's added several colours all over the rocks. Pieces of wool have also been cut and stitched so that it waves around with its ends poking up, and there are some bead sticks as well which create a lovely alternative texture. 

There was so much going on in this piece I had to photograph it from various angles!

I have slowly been collecting sea themed fabrics like the ones with pebbles or waves, there's also some sky fabric which is a favourite for a sunny seaside theme. This piece has a lovely cove with water curling in around the cliff's edge to a little rocky area filled with shells and sea glass that this person had brought with them. The shiny rock was cut from a sequin tape I had brought along which won't fray because of the glue used and looks great cut up into small pieces to stitch down.

Here we have a lovely sandy beach with a cliff just off to the side. Lots of lovely trimmings were used here to edge the fabric layers - several colours of Stylecraft Moonbeam yarn which is a knitted tube that can be teased apart for great texture. The green fronds were made with deconstructed Stylecraft Re-create yarn which is recycled and has little flecks of other colours in among the green. It works perfectly with the white of the shells. 

I should have said that the top image for each piece (four Stitchscapes in total) is how each hoop was looking at lunchtime. They change so much from when the fabric goes down to when the bits and bobs start getting added on! This final lady is a repeat offender for Stitchscape workshops and she came prepared with some of her own sea themed fabrics which are deep and mysterious looking. The dark blues are just lovely and you could almost imaging those waves to be snow capped mountains!

I try to have a quick clean around at lunchtime once all of the fabrics are finished with to create the backgrounds, mainly because it means that the final clear up goes a little bit quicker. This time around I also had some helpers to speed things along! Obviously Fin was directing proceedings from the table top.