Kickstart Workshop

As part of the Kickstart programme the East Midlands Region of the Embroiderers Guild provides an inspirational day and two workshops. I went on the first one which was mixed-media. We were to take some photos of Snibston with us along with papers, sheers, threads and anything else we wanted within the colour scheme. People who had been on the inspirational day had been given instructions on how to make fabric paper and were to take any they had made with them. Although I hadn't been on that day, I had made some fabric paper beforehand albeit just one layer of paper (a patchwork of several different papers) on scrim, so I took that with me. I'm glad I did as there wasn't the facilities or time for paper made in the morning to dry to work on. I cut my fabric paper in half and covered one piece with tissue paper and metallic acrylic paint and left it to dry. The other half I covered with small pieces of sheers, as an alternative to tissue paper, to soften the colours of my fabric paper. I also made some silk paper from gummy waste and fused some angelina fibres. Instead of taking 4x6 sized photos with me I had put about 12 photos into a collage which was A4 size. This gave me different sized photos to choose from which were a better size for this project. I tore out several that I liked out and arranged them with the silk paper, angelina fibres and small pieces of paper until I was happy. Next step was to sew using the automatic stitches on my sewing machine. I added some buttons and was pleased with my design. However, the tutor suggested adding some handstitiching in brighter colours to pick out the red in one of the photos. I had only taken browns, browny yellows and browny oranges with me so I waited until I went home to add the handstitching. I agree with the tutor that the red has given it a bit of life.


I'm so pleased with it that I had it framed (thanks Dad) and have put it in the exhibtion at Snibston which is on now.

It was while I was at the workshop that I saw a copy of Beryl Taylor's book Mixed Media Explorations. The pictures in it are just so lovely to look at but I resisted temptation to go out and buy a copy. I enjoyed the workshop, using papers, fabrics, photos and buttons and Beryl's book expands on what we learnt, introducing more products to make embellishments, but I wasn't sure if it was really for me. However, I used the mixed media technique for my local Guild's competition (more on that another time) and again enjoyed it. I recently saw Beryl's book again and just had to have it this time.