I love to stitch. It’s one of the reasons I love making buttons. I spend a lot of my spare time making things with stitch. It’s the feeling of the thread pulling through fabric, and the way colours can be combined, and the textures that emerge I think. Whatever it is I always find myself soothed by stitching.
I do a lot of my stitching with, and onto, wool based fibres. It’s my medium of choice regardless of what I’m making. That being said, I’m a sucker for pretty bits of fabric whatever the composition, and I collect little bits of scrap regardless of what it’s made of. They’re known as treasures in our craft club, after a phrase in Lexi Boeger’s Intwined book about spinning art yarns. Most of the stitching workshops below are aimed at encouraging people to collect and use this type of material!
This workshop takes you through the process of needle felting a picture, or background for a picture, and using simple embroidery stitches to enhance your picture.
Visible Mending is a great way to give your much loved clothes or textiles a new lease of life. We will cover a range of mending techniques, including darning, patching, sashiko, appliqué, and more. You can bring something of your own to get advice on, or learn on samples we provide.
I ran this workshop twice last year as a group workshop, and it went so well I’ve added it as a one to one. You’ll create a journal from fabric, learn basic needlepoint and hand stitching techniques, and come away with a completely unique book you can write in, stitchin, or simply treasure. This is one of those workshops that works well in a day, or over three sessions with homework in between.
Beginners embroidery covers a range of stitches, working with a hoop, design transfer, and finishing your hoop for display. This course takes place over four sessions with homework in between. You’ll learn to work with different threads, combining stitches and colours to create a unique piece of textile art.
I’ve just run this as a group workshop, and it went so well I’m adding it to the one to one workshop list. This is a day of play, creating your bird body, and decorating it with a variety of objects from clock parts to feathers. Suitable for all levels.
Stitch your own houseplant let's you create the perfect plant in textiles, using a variety of stitch, felt and button techniques. Why is it perfect? No looking after required!
This is a brand new group workshop I’ve added to the Sunday workshop program for the 28th May. We’ll create a simple bag using old and unwanted textiles. We’ll use the Indian tradition of Kantha (running stitch) to put the bag together and embellish it. Perfect for everyone, especially those wanting to reuse old pillowcases, sheets and other unwanted textiles.