Road trip to Torhole Bottom

My friend Jane & I headed out to the wilds of Somerset on Saturday for a textile workshop with the lovely Judy Alexander. Titled Paper, Paint, Cloth & Stitch Judy's workshop involved a number of techniques to transform painted or photographed paper into pieces of textile art showing stitched flowers on layered paper/textiles. 

Artwork by Judy Alexander

These beautiful pieces were created by manipulating painted papers and stitching this with layers of sheers added, then heavily stitched by machine

Detail of one of Judy's artworks

My painting onto paper

First off we were thrown straight out of our comfort zone to quickly paint a picture inspired by flowers - I'm no painter so it was a little eek-worthy! After the initial horror, and Judy's expert guidance, we soon got cracking and found it to be a really enjoyable way to spend a rainy morning.

Once dry we than had fun scrunching up our hard work, and started the fun bit of adding stitch. The day went amazingly fast, and I have plenty more work to do to my piece, but I made a start and hopefully you can see what a difference the processes are starting to make.

I'm looking forward to finishing it before too long, and will definitely add some sheers to the surface - maybe I'll show you the finished item then :-) I enjoyed these techniques and can think of a number of projects I might use them on.....just need a few more hours in the day!