Wainscott Sewing Studio Workshop

Gosh this feels like such a long time ago - and I suppose it was, all the way back in April. I hadn't realised this post was still in my drafts until I went looking for the very post to reference a more current post back to!

I have recently been cutting a swathe through Kent it seems and the last few workshops I've blogged about are sort of all on a line, as if I'd stuck a pin and string on a map above my home and swirled it round, everything is sort of that distance away from us. 

Each time I have a workshop and I pull out my bag of threads I'm reminded that I really mean to go through those threads and get them all organised and pretty, rather than in a tangled jumble which is difficult to extract from and/or find the right colour. The problem is that I don't get a lot of time for that sort of thing - the last time they were properly sorted was during the Pandemic when all anyone had was time - so utilising travel time with some good old fashioned sorting out seemed like a good idea. Amazingly I didn't get very far into the bag. 

I usually get dropped off to the workshops as we only have the one car and being about an hour away from home means that Reece and Toddler F generally find somewhere fun to go and visit and have a special day together. This time round they went to Diggerland and had an absolute whale of a time. Toddler F is obsessed with vehicles and things on wheels so this was right up his street. It's nice to know that they are having a good day whilst I'm busy doing stitchy things and we can exchange stories when I get picked up at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, I was laying out my Stitchscape display and chatting to the ladies, some of whom I had met before when they came to visit a showcase event put on last year with the Sussex Stitchers. 

I wasn't providing workshop packs for this workshop, they were all providing their own materials and hoops following my kit list and someone had brought along sheep fabric they'd found (the same as in my Woollydale kits) so sheep invaded pretty much every hoop which was quite funny. 

There were more than six ladies in the class but some had to leave earlier than others so I haven't got them all included in the end-of-day photo. There was a lot of chatter and tea and cake so not quite so much stitching got accomplished as in other workshops but that's kind of what these days are about really, providing the inspiration and ideas of how to take it forward, demonstrate how to look at trimmings and threads and then just leave everyone to it to carry on and see where it takes them. The hardest part can often be trying to get someone to believe in their own creativity! 

This was a really fun piece as the lady had a beautiful batik fabric at the bottom there with printed gold lines that looked like water. Yellow wool roving was twisted and couched along some of those lines to look like a reflection of the sun peeking through those hills further up and it was really effective! I suggested she add some sun rays and metallic threads as well for additional sparkle, and to match the glittery-ness of the water. 

Norma was one of the few who didn't add sheep into her piece and I think her sea piece is really lovely! She struggled a little bit with creating a sense of perspective so I chatted to her about playing around with her little islands, which initially she had both on top of the dark blue water line, and bringing one down to create more of a cove and giving some movement into the hoop. Your eye travels around that island on the left there to go out to wider waters hinted at over on the right which is really lovely. She had some fantastic glass/gem beads which she's stitched down as well for water washed rocks. 

This lady (above) hadn't done any embroidery like this at all and was slightly nervous I think. Her batik fabric spoke to me of trees so I suggested trying out a little woodland and, in the same way as the island on the water, layering the trees under different horizontal layers and making them thinner as they got higher to give the perspective of a path almost between the trees, taking you off into the distance. Once I'd shown her how to make blanket stitch for the tree edging she was away!

There were some fantastic fabric prints brought along to this workshop, lots of very textural looking ones with grasses, water lines, bark lines and even a stone wall! I do get a lot of fabric envy, there are just too many beautiful fabrics and prints being produced and I want them all!