May meeting - Four corners

This month we organised four different activities for members to try - the activities were:
- weaving
- hand made cords
- needle felting and use of the embellisher
- shisha mirrors

There were lots of ready-worked examples displayed for inspiration.  Enough equipment, yarns and other materials were available for members to create their own samples of different types of embellishment.  

In the first corner, here are two members weaving:-

 

In the next corner there was an opportunity to work on handmade cords, either twisted by hand or stitched on a sewing machine, using zigzag stitch.  This is a very old form of embellishment and the oldest example of a twisted cord dates back to 1500 BC.

This member is working very hard on twisting her cord...!

There was a demonstration of the embellisher machine, which doesn't require thread or a bobbin and allows you to do needle punch felting.  The needles push the fibres through the fabric to create a design.  Members were also able to try hand punch felting, which also gives excellent results:-

The fourth activity was shisha, or mirror work, where small mirrors are added to fabric using decorative stitching.  This type of work is often seen in Indian embroidery:-

Everyone had a very busy, and productive afternoon!  Don't forget to let the committee know if you have any suggestions for an activity which can be included in a Four Corners meeting.

Fibre Fusion Workshop

Last week we held a very busy and productive workshop with Hilary Naghashi, who showed us different ways of working with natural fibres, such as silk noil, bamboo fibre, tussah tops, soya bean fibre ..... the list goes on!

Hilary brought along some examples of her own work which we all admired:-

Hilary is an experienced and generous tutor and, with her supervision and help, we then began to experiment by making our own samples - as you can see, they were very successful:-

Everyone made their own collection of samples which could be worked on further at home.  Time flew by and we all wished that the workshop had been much longer!