Kits & Workshops

 

I used my newly acquired first week of being a work from home person whose son was at nursery to start on my Kasumi Koi kit! The fabrics for this arrived ages ago but it just never made it out of the packaging, other than once to oogle the fabrics and gasp over the shininess and printed gold lines.

I kept putting it off because I needed serious concentration time and had to be in the right headspace, which just so happened to come along a couple of weeks ago! 

The Kasumi Koi kit is made up of only Makower printed fabrics and it's such a gamble to see if these fabrics will work together as some of them were only printed pictures in a promotional booklet I was shown so, to try and match these with the samples was a little bit of a guessing game. It was fun to have a pre-order though and know that they were going to arrive with me before it was all released to the public. 

I had initially been going to make this in a 15cm/6" hoop but, when playing around with the hoops and the fish in particular, the size would only allow for about one fish per pond. I didn't like the idea of a lonely, sad koi fish stuck all alone in his fancy golden pond so I have scaled this up to a 20cm/8" hoop (the same size as the Harvest Sun kit) which then allows for three or four fish per hoop depending on the piece you get. I will likely have to allow for a much bigger piece than each kit needs so that there is a chance for everyone to fussy cut around the sections they want and play with where the fish end up. 

I've been trying to film more reels and videos as I go through making up these hoops and, thank goodness for zoom because the table just ends up an absolute mess with bits everywhere. It's good fun though and I'm trying to get better with it all. Lighting is my current problem as our home isn't all that bright and we have very warm inside lights which distort the colours a bit.

As it happens, I haven't touched the hoop since I started it - but it is started! - I have got some lovely trimmings and yarns which match in perfectly and I will hopefully be using metallic threads as well so there will be a little bit of a sparkly situation going on. 

So, watch this space!

On another subject, I had such a lovely little private workshop in Bexhill-on-sea the other weekend. It was organised by a lady I'd met a couple of times before and who had come to a similar private workshop organised in a wonderful marquee in a back garden! 

She had paid so much attention to detail in the workshop - putting together her own fabric kit packs for the ladies to choose from using fabrics from her own stash. Aren't they amazing? I love the cows especially, they work really well in terms of scale and print direction. She also had loads and loads of different threads and trimmings and beads, bead shells and all sorts of things! I had taken my scrap bag with additional threads and trimmings so there was just so much to use and draw inspiration from. 

I especially enjoy the conversations that I end up having during workshop days. Talking very seriously about requiring hardstanding for the cows and how to turn fabrics into fences or making the best kinds of grass. Taken out of context, some of the conversations would seem very strange!

Pretty much all of these ladies were stitchers - or quilters which we'll let them off for - so they didn't need all that much direction really. I was there to give ideas and to reassure when doubt struck but there wasn't a huge amount of stitch teaching going on. I think we covered drizzle stitch, bullion knots and cast-on stitch, feather stitch, fly stitch and french knots?

Mostly it's answering the question of 'what can I stitch on this bit?' 

I do enjoy that question though, it's an opportunity to think about colour and weight of line - do you mix colours in the needle at once, or use a variegated thread, perhaps you stitch an initial layer in one colour and then come back and stitch something else on top in a second colour. Perhaps it's all monotone and blends in so it doesn't shout out but adds some simple texture onto the surface. If it's far away, do you use a single strand of a stranded cotton, or do you use a big chunky perle or tapestry yarn, does it need to be fluffy or smooth.... there are so many options for each layer!