Berry Patchwork Retreat

I am teaching at the Berry Patchwork Retreat from 7-8 September 2013, and I have to say it's been quite a number of years since I taught in NSW. I am teaching all things to do with stitching, so Transfer Printing with Lutradur and then stitching the finished prints and working with Solufix.

One thing about sending samples to encourage enrollments is to make samples which are achievable in the allotted time and as working with Solufix is pretty recent for me, working out how much time it will take to densely stitch a small panel takes some investigating because the ones I have shown previously here cannot be stitched in one day in a workshop, and I am also mindful of the fact that  participants may also not have the thread selection I have- some people have a 12 pencil colouring box and others have a 136 pencil colouring box.

So the  cat image I showed two posts ago is doable in a day, but then not everyone likes a cat. So I decided to make another sample, and I learnt quite a bit doing it..... not every photo is suitable for smaller pieces..... and being a lover of pomegranates, i thought this would make a good embroidery

  But not..... the finished embroidery doesn't  look anything like the photo, and I realised this early on, so instead of tossing it aside and starting over with some thing more suitable my printer decided to run out of coloured ink, and as my budget is very challenged at the moment due to a 2 day workshop cancelling last weekend,it will have to wait until some time in the future to print another image, so i persevered- and decided to focus on  the play of colour rather than trying to make it look like pomegranates. The problem with the photo was that  given the scale of what i thought could be achieved in a day, the detail in the photo was too much to be able to execute it.I also  put the image over red fabric- not a good idea, the definition  disappeared to some extent, which made it difficult to see where to put which colour, and I didn't exactly have the right coloured threads- I used Mettler's silk finish threads which I am loving ( but  don't have the full pallette- in my dreams....)

 So the photo above was the resulting stitched piece- approximately postcard size. The stitching is very dense which is why it takes  a day to execute it. I did discover the back ended up being quite interesting ( and I did use two different colours in the bobbin- red and and deep aqua colour)

And then in the post yesterday- came these bags from Germany- they are being used at Nadelweldt Karlsruhe- it's my Travellers' Blanket which was published in their magazine . It's a buzz to see  my work on these bags and I wish I could see them walking around. But like so many things in the quilting  world there is no payment for me ( though I did get 5 bags and they are lovely to have )- but I figure it's good publicity.

And there will be another on-line class starting for the Travellers Blanket on 17 June 2013.If you are interested please email me.