ACEs Workshop Part One

 

I very much enjoy having the opportunity to have a play around just with layering colours and patterns to create different potential images. Sometimes I try to be a bit daring and put together combinations I wouldn't naturally go for, and sometimes I stick to tried and tested colourways and balances, those that can quite clearly be interpreted into a certain type of landscape. Of course, this scale of hoop making must mean it's another workshop! 

Last year I was invited to go and talk to the Arundel Creative Embroiderers (ACEs) at Arundel museum and Mr & Baby DT and I made a day out of going up and having a pootle round. Arundel itself reminded me a bit of Lewes, hilly and with lots of antique shops!! 

As it turned out, it was a great talk and ACEs were very interested in the Stitchscapes, so much so two workshops had to be booked in to fit everyone in! We didn't meet in Arundel as it happens, but in Barnham and the workshop seemed to also include ladies from a group called Barnham Buddies which was nice because not everyone knew each other but by the end they were all friends! Which is what stitching in groups is about, all of the sharing of ideas and techniques and experiences. 

Barnham Community Hall is very nice, lots of rooms, big carpark, nice lighting and heating (sometimes the halls can be a bit chilly). We had a fair sized room which was just right for the group too and I could have a display along one end, and put all of my workshop baggage on tables down at the other end. 

We arrived mega early for the workshop - about an hour or so - as we had anticipated traffic but flew there in record time, even stopping for breakfast along the way. Luckily around the hall there is also a playground (with a hilarious roundabout that jolts and bumps that Baby F found utterly hysterical), and a big field with wooden climbing apparatus around it so we could walk round and kill some time whilst we waited. 

Once inside and set up it was down to business! The giant bag of scraps proved too tempting for some and it ended up tipped out on the floor so that everyone could get elbow deep in the bits of fabric that live in there. I have been considering working through it and perhaps bagging up colours into bags or organising it somehow but I really don't know where to start or how to organise it so it just lives in the bag, slowly growing into even more of a mountain! 

I have since learned that apparently charity shops will taken the smallest snips and offcuts of thread and fabric for rags, one lady in a more recent workshop saves every single micro morsel of fabric, puts them in a little bag and when the bag is full drops it into a charity shop who accepts rag donations. I might have to investigate more into this because I throw away a lot of tiny pieces of fabric or calico offcuts, especially from kit making, but I do like to recycle. I had assumed by 'rag' it just mean trousers with holes in type thing rather than bits smaller than a postage stamp (the old style, before they all got extra QR codes put with them). 

There was no real set theme to the workshop so the packs had been a mixed bag of some that could be interpreted as coastal, some more countryside, and others quite floral so everyone chose a pack that kick started some kind of inspiration and got going! None of the packs are set, it's not a challenge to use all of the fabrics included exactly as they are - if there's a fabric in the pack that isn't liked, or doesn't fit the theme you're going for, swap it out for a different one, either from a friend's pack or from the scrap bag. Think also about turning it over and using the back of it rather than the front if it's the pattern that's throwing you off, or the boldness of colour. 

As always, with embroidery groups, quite often it's not the stitches that need teaching but the way to think and look differently at the fabrics being used. I often get told that I look at fabrics differently to others, seeing the potential for different types of stitches or ways it can be turned into a texture or landscape. My role in these workshops is to literally spurt out ideas and to also encourage the doubting Donnas who say things like "I'm not very creative" or "I'm no good with putting colours together". 

There is an element of practice and experience I think when choosing fabrics, but equally that doesn't mean that you aren't creative and if everyone put the same colours together you wouldn't get avantgarde designs with 'bold colour choices'. How boring would life be. Some people would say those designers have bad colour choices, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. 

This one is based on Ben Nevis and I think it's absolutely fab! That rocky fabric was from her own stash and is absolutely ideal for a barren looking Scottish mountain. I don't know if she brought it along thinking about Ben Nevis, or if it popped up as an idea after looking at the other fabrics on offer but it's a brilliant start!

Sometimes people have the most amazing things in their stashes. I don't often do other designer's kits (partly because I don't like following instructions and making something identical to someone else, but also I don't have time to stitch other projects when I can't keep up with my own!) but it seems to be a great way of building up a stash of incredible types of thread and fancy yarns. The fluffy hand dyed yarns above were some that I am really coveting for my own stash. 

This coastal piece is off to an amazing start too! The little trumpet shells were from a craft shop so actually had holes drilled into them which meant they could be stitched like beads - usually if you pick this shape of shell up off the beach you can't stitch them down because they're slippery suckers and no thread positioning will make them secure. 

This lady had come very prepared with her hoop already fabric-d up. She wanted ideas on how to stitch, what stitches to use and how to add texture to the hoop rather than any kind of instruction on layering. We discussed keeping on adding running stitches in circles around her moon, perhaps changing the colour from white to a mid blue to a darker blue so it looked like the light was fading out but still adding in that texture to the sky. Over the top she could also add little french knot stars every so often for a starry sky. 

You can't see it so well in this photo but she's also started adding random length blanket stitches up those beautiful birch trees to imitate the fabric print, secure the fabric edges and add bark-like texture. 

I'd love to see what this one looks like finished. Quite a lot of these fabrics were also the lady's own and and the wading birds are just fab! Exactly the right kind of scale for the hoop. I really like the bush she's putting in at the front so it makes you feel like you're an ornithologist peeking through from behind a load of shrubbery (perhaps wearing a camouflage hat and looking with binoculars whilst lying flat out on a scratchy sand dune with those scrubby painful dried grasses that hurt your feet if you walk barefoot over them). 

I will be back with another ACEs blog post for the second workshop soon so you can see more of the amazing hoops being created by these groups. Do you have a favourite from this day?