Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Creative Play Day at the Embroiderers Guild

Today was the monthly meeting of one of the Creative Play day groups. We were reminded that there is an exhibition coming up that will feature some of the works we have done at these sessions. So I was inspired to finish a piece I started at one of the sessions.
It is based on one of my sunset photos but done strictly from memory. And it was heavily influenced by the threads I had to hand. It is mostly silk threads, sari silk yarns and some dyed silk ribbon. I loved working on the hessian and just randomly sewing the threads. Not too randomly, I was trying to convey a sunset scene. But I wasn't being too precious about stitch length and other such pedantic notions.

I was invited to lead today's session. I decided to do it on fabric collage, seeing that was what I have been playing around with lately.
I don't have any images from today as I forgot to ask for permission to show other people's works. But it doesn't really matter as they are all works in progress. And the progress may well stop at the end of the session. The advantage of the play days is that we are exposed to things we don't usually do, and we may choose never to do them again. It absolutely doesn't matter.

I had thought to demonstrate on my latest idea. That didn't eventuate as it is much more fiddly than I had anticipated. I am doing another torn (or cut) strip collage, based on the Bungle Bungle mountains in Western Australia.

My design is relatively detailed and the pieces needed for it are all tiny. So it is taking much longer to do than I had anticipated. Not to worry, I was able to talk about the process so far and about some of the products I am using to assist me with the development of the piece. More on this later.
It was a lovely day. I didn't feel too threatened about demonstrating as the group is full of receptive listeners who will have a go, even when it is not a technique they are particularly interested in doing. It is just a lovely play day with people of like interests.

2 comments:

theregatha said...

Thank you for the reminder: I love those sort of 'easy going' play days but somehow I forget to have them!

Mary said...

Hi theregatha,
Yes, it is easy to put these days off because they aren't 'important' - except they are!