A Folk Art Swallow at the Festival of Quilts

In a couple of days the wonderful Festival of Quilts will open at the NEC in Birmingham.

It truly is a festival of creativity, not only for quilters but for visitors from around the world who love textiles of all kinds.

Next Sunday I will be teaching one of the 3 hour workshops using the most beautiful materials. A joy to stitch with.

We will be making an applique Folk Art inspired Swallow picture using Donegal Wool Tweed by Fabric Affair and Embroidering it with WonderFil Ellana wool threads.

I am so looking forward to the show and even more looking forward to teaching this lovely workshop.

I hope to see you there

Chill out Stitching!

It has been so lovely over the Christmas break to have a bit of time to throw myself into some stitching.

I found some silk and wool threads that I had hand dyed and together with my favourite green silk thread from 21st Century Yarns, they looked so lovely. Like a breath of Summertime!

I put them together in a bag with some dyed muslin and silk snippets and over Christmas this slowly happened!.......

I embroidered a Summer Garden onto the front of an uninspiring handmade felt sketchbook cover. 

Last year my amazing, talented friend Suzanne was making all in one sketchbook covers using a resist and I thought I'd try the technique using some wool tops. Hers are stunning but I just used any old colours to try it out. It worked so well, but, because I'd used such dull colours it never felt quite right. It was just waiting...

So my dull old cover now looks like a Wild Summer Garden and chilled me out good and proper over Christmas. I think it will inspire me to do some nice colourful art in there this year. 

Isn't that a nice way to start a new year of Art? 
With a fresh new sketchbook to play in.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year

May wonderful things happen for you and those you love. xx

PS. I thought you may like to see a couple of photos of the dyeing process. This is from a blog post from June 2012 if you'd like to see the whole thing with before and after photos. 

Here are a couple of photos of the threads and other bits of silk, velvet and cotton I space dyed. The colours make me so happy.

Alice Fox Summer School part 2

I'm having such a lovely time at Alice's workshops. She has introduced us to the most wonderful techniques for Eco printing and mark making with natural materials. 

Alice makes the most beautiful little concertina books and bound books with delicate marks which Mother Nature supplies and Alice coaxes onto their pages. She has shown us how to make these little books. These are some of Alice's books.

We have used rust and plant materials to colour fabric and paper. We made little parcels of paper and fabric and wrapped them around metal and leaves and onion skins.
We then submerged them for a couple of days in one of Alice's cocktails to let the rust bring out the colours and marks. She kept us so busy doing other things but we really just couldn't wait to see how they were going to turn out!

It rained hard for two whole days! We happily stayed indoors and played with new techniques with plants and rust.
We printed with leaves onto fabric and paper. We did weaving and stitching with grass and lavender, we stitched around found objects. 

On this sample, the seed heads and feather were 'stitched' into the scrim using the object to make the stitch. I added a just few real stitches to hold them there. I have made a sketchbook to store all my samples. I love the shadows that are made on the paper.

This is a close up of the feather and the wood curl.

The seed heads were woven through the scrim and then over woven with stitch. Look at the shadows!

This is one of the leaf prints on silk organza. I decided to layer it onto rusted fabric and then stitched around the leaves with some seed stitches.

This is another leaf print with lavender. I have started stitching it to some rusted fabric and have collaged it with some other fabrics and some of my found objects.

These are some more of my objects that have been partly hidden beneath net and sheer fabrics and enhanced with stitch. The limpet shell has been stitched on and the threads have been needle woven.

Day 3! We finally opened the book parcels today! It was so lovely to sit in the sunshine after days of rain and open our little surprise parcels.
Look at how time has transformed them!

Tomorrow is the last day. I will show you the little books finished, waxed and stitched and some of the other pages in my sketch book in the next blog post. Bye for now! x

When is is a tin no longer a tin?

Do you know about Altered Tins? 

I love a tin! Some of them are so cute or useful. I love putting buttons and beads in them  and I love to look in them and sort through the treasures within.

Well... there is now another use for tins of all sizes. You can take an ordinary tin and alter it to make it into something completely different.  The only limit is your own imagination.

They make the perfect little showcase for artwork. Because tins are so irresistible for peeking into, you can hide a little arty scene or frame a perfect little piece of vintage ephemera within an ordinary tin as a surprise for the viewer. Or you can make the entire box into something completely different.

I have been plying with tins this week to get ready for an Embroiderers Guild Summer School in July. We are spending 2 days making interactive Altered Books and Altered Tins.

Would you like a little look at my tins?

The first one is based on Bees: Those precious little creatures who pollinate our crops and keep our crops growing.

This is a little cigar box, about 3"x 3" in size. I have decoupaged the lid to disguise the raised writing on the front and painted it with metallic paints.

Then I used a new Sizzix Honeycomb die to cut out metal and metallic card for the background of the base and inner lid. This was layered onto paper and net.

I put a little wooden frame on top of the metal honeycomb to frame the little brass bee and glass flowers. I added a tiny brass tag with the word Believe. We must look after our Bees and protect them from harmful pesticides. Our crops and food supplies will be in grave danger if the bees die out.

Below is a close up of the frame with the flowers, the bee and the metal honeycomb.

The second tin is teeny tiny!

About 1.25 inches long.

It is small enough to be worn as a pendant. The outside of the lid is painted to resemble enameling. A little impressionist garden made of dots.

It has been wired and beaded into a pendant and has the same little brass Believe wired into the top.
The inside is handmade Merino and silk felt with hand stitching and glass flowers.  A little fairy lives in this tin. We all believe in Fairies don't we?

I'd love to know what you think.

I will show you more tins  in the next few days.

Bye for now xx

Monday Crazy Patchwork

Today we have been playing with the most lovely fabrics and trims. We have hand painted lace and bonded and cut up beautiful embroidered silks

We have been making Crazy Patchwork and just like the Victorian originals we have made ours using snippets of lovely precious fabrics and all kinds of little treasures: broken jewellery, beads, velvet flowers, lace. 

We will be embellishing them next month with hand stitching using silk and hand dyed threads.

I just wanted to show you Dawn's finished and framed piece from last Month's workshop.

And Stella's Work in progress from last month. This is painted tissue with applied silk papers.

She has started to hand embroider it.

Isn't that an amazing texture? And we were all drooling at the gorgeous colours.

I can't wait to see what they do next with all my stash. Sharing and inspiring each other is just the most fun you can have on a dreary old Monday!

Songs of Innocence

I've come over all monochrome in  my newest Altered Book.

I'm usually so mesmerised by colour but sometimes the peacefulness of pale is just what I need on a crazy day.

Songs of Innocence is all about the beauty of simplicity and the cherishing of  memory, the moments of silence when we know the most important truths and taking time to breathe in the busyness of our hectic day.

I'm hoping that the painting of the pages and the gentle stitching of the linen will be a kind of meditation about the important things in my life. 

Try a little stitching and give yourself a moment of time to be still.  Have a happy peaceful day xx

Monday Vintage Blanket Stitch Workshop

Tomorrow is the next sewing workshop and we are going to be working with Mixed Media and Paper as a way of adding a modern twist to our Folk Art inspired stitching.

We are then going to be stitching on these and adding elements of our own stories and memories to the collages.

Here are some more photos of the gorgeous Paper Patchwork pieces.  First Dawn's.

Judi's.

Stella's

We are also working with Tea bags which I have been saving  for ages.They are amazing to work with because they are made from really strong paper which doesn't fall apart when used with water. They are great to stitch on, they are already tea dyed, ha ha, and I'm especially in love with the round ones. 

I also just wanted to show you a finished blanket sampler made by the wonderfully talented Dawn Walsh. I need to get a bigger photo so that you can see the incredible detail. She has decided to frame this instead of using it as a blanket book cover and brought it to show to us. It looks totally amazing in a frame. I am so, so proud of my stitchers. This is amazing Dawn.

If you are free during the day once a month on a Monday, join us. Slow stitching with gorgeous materials is good for your soul  and it is so lovely to allow yourself a day just for you. We meet in Hemel Hempstead.

New Year, New Workshops.

Now that I have finished hibernating after Christmas, I am so excited to be able to tell you about the new workshops that will be coming up very soon.

The first two will be Handmade Felt:  A workshop for beginners on Saturday the 21st February. This will also be fun for anyone who wants to get back into felt and play with colour in the softest merino wool and silk. 

We will be making flowers....

And a picture. 

We will be layering, using silk and other exciting fibres and discussing methods of stitching, beading and embellishing felt. Have a little look at some of the photos of Handmade Felt at the beginning of my blog to get some more ideas.

The second workshop which is on the 21st March.will continue from the first one. We will be finishing and hand embellishing our pictures and brooches, learning about needle felting and making a seamless wool and silk felt bag.

The cost of each day is £65 and includes everything you will need including refreshments but not lunch. The times are 10am till 4pm. Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead. Let me know if you'd like to book. You can contact me through my website:www.paulawatkins.co.uk  I'd love it if you'd join me for playing with beautiful wooly stuff.

Books! wonderful BOOKS!

Keep a look out everyone! 

On the 5th December Maggie Grey and Workshop on the Web will be announcing the start of the  online  auction for the Artist Sketchbooks in their charity Sketch-aThon. 

This will be in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The WOW team are hoping to raise as much money as possible from the sale of these wonderful books and are hoping that people will buy them as a Christmas treat for somebody special. 

You will be able to see them on Maggie's blog: www.magstitch.blogspot.co.uk  and the Workshop on the Web facebook page on the 5th December.

Here is a little sneek peek  at 2 of my books that will be in the auction. There are some more photos of the first book a few posts back if you'd like to see them.

This first one is done with a hand cut original stencil mask. There is one of these in an envelope, included in the book, so that whoever buys it can add their own artwork to the book.

These next two are a textured 'rubbing plate' and the rubbing made from it.

Goldfish!

This is the second Sketchbook. I seem to have a fish obsession going on. This book is fish shaped

The cover is made from painted and textured and hand stitched heavyweight watercolour paper. The pages are Gelli Plate printed like the ones in the previous post and ready to be decorated or drawn upon by it's new owner.
The eye is made from layered vintage Mother of Pearl buttons

There are books by some amazing, inspiring artists in the auction. Please look, admire and pass the word around. This is such a wonderful cause. The Teenage Cancer Trust does such amazing work.

UPDATE! The auction is now over and the books raised  a fantastic total of £1337. Such a brilliant idea and such great support from all the sketchbook buyers. Thank you so very much. xx

Monthly Workshops

The monthly workshops are finally up on my website but without the Paypal button (yet)!

The Monday Folk Art Blanket workshops are on the 2nd Mondays of the month with the first one on the 13th October. We will be making a stitched sampler using  hand embroidery stitches and gorgeous hand dyed silk and wool threads. 

We are going to be stitching on beautifully soft vintage wool blankets which I have found in the most delicious range of colours.  They are my favourite surface for stitching on and the relaxed rhythm of hand sewing is the perfect gentle way to start the week.

We are also going to add some lovely found objects to our samplers. Beading, mother of pearl buttons, jewellery findings.  We may also make some handmade felt with merino wool and silk fibres to add some texture to our work.

The day starts at 10am and we will finish in time for the school run at 2.30. Refreshments and materials are provided but bring a packed lunch.

The cost is£45 for the day.

Please contact me through my website to book. www.paulawatkins.co.uk

The monthly Saturday workshops start on October 18th. The cost for the day, 10-4,  is £65.

The first one is Altered Books. There are examples and explanations about  Altered Books on this blog and also on my website if you would like to get some ideas of techniques or themes. 

This workshop is suitable for absolute beginners and those who have made books before. We will be starting our book from scratch and learning all kinds of mixed media techniques to make them special.

The November workshop is Gelli Plate Monoprinting. This is a totally addictive way of making unique printed and patterned papers and fabrics.

 If you have wanted to try out Gelli printing before buying one this is the perfect way to start and when you  are addicted you can buy your plate for a reduced price at the end.

If you have a Gelli plate and want to bring it, that is fine too.

In January the Saturday workshop will be beginners Handmade felt. A flower brooch and a felt panel.

February will be more advanced  Handmade Felt techniques; A picture in wet felting and also learning how to do Needle felting.

Following on throughout the year there will be workshops on resin jewellery, rust dyeing, fabric and thread dyeing, journals and sketchbooks and more...

Contact me through my website to book. Let's get arty!