I did an applique workshop with Susannah Sindall who runs the group Liberty Stitches and really enjoyed my day. Sewing has bad memories for me. It took me so long to finish a sleeveless blouse at school that it didn't fit me when I had finished. The next year Dad told the teacher that he was not going to buy material just to waste. As a punishment she made me sew brown paper for the whole year.
This was NOTHING like that. We were given a piece of calico and told to find fabrics that suggested the sea to us and just play. I was in heaven with all that colour and picked out loads of different blues. Susannah then came round and we talked about design and discarded/added fabrics. The whole process is about building up layers to make a background and using very fine gauzy layers to suggest things.
The sewing involves sewing all the layers together using a stab stitch which meant you went in and out of the same hole and the long part of the stitch (about 1cm) was at the back. You use a very fine thread called an overlocking thread.
I managed to complete the background selection and do some stitching. We then decided on the foreground and it will be kept very simple. I am going to do a butterfly. For this you use iron on interfacing to give some substance to the shape. Then there is the work of embellishing the butterfly so it will be some time before the piece is finished.
Watch this space!
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