Jackie Cardy Workshop

At the end of last month I went to a workshop led by Jackie Cardy.  I went with two friends from Traverse - Dia and Cath.   The workshop was organised by Becca from Textile Explorations.

We started with a practice piece.

 After felting and drying.

Then we moved on to pre-felts which I don't remember ever doing before.  We made double-sided pieces.

In the afternoon we moved on to making our main piece.  This is the background.

I didn't take any photos whilst I was adding the pre-felts so my photos skip to the felted piece.

The piece needed to dry overnight so that we could start sewing the next day.

We started machining on our practice piece.

Between my inability to free machine properly and my dislike of the black thread I didn't get along too happily.  I switched to navy blue which I preferred.  Then I moved on to my main piece.

Photo by Becca Birtles

I really struggled with the stitching because I thought I had to get it really accurate and around the shapes but once it dawned on me that it could look more like this drawing I did, I relaxed a bit.

After the machining I started adding handstitching.

I'm not totally keen on the fact that the uprights are slanting so I may cut it up.  I haven't yet but this is what it would look like using cropped photos.

I loved the technique and may start another piece soon.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Finished! Yeah!

I am thrilled that I have finished a project I started in November.  I went on a workshop with Steph Redfern called Thrift & Alchemy.   The idea was incorporate (recycle) bits and pieces you already had into a textile piece.

Health warning: this post has a lot of photographs in it.  And I mean a lot!

I decided that I wanted to make a fabric book based on the Fruit of the Spirit.  I had a book which was designed for scrapbooking which I cut up to use for the words in my book.  I started by painting and stencilling on different fabrics and papers.

Then I cut up some felt into 9 inch squares for the base of each page and tore strips of paper and fabric to create the backgrounds.

I bonded the papers and fabrics to the felt.

Then I machined and handstitched on each page.

Last Sunday I took all the pages to my local crop and tacked the pages together.  First assembling them in pairs and then putting the pairs back to back with a printed fabric 'spine'.

And then finally today, I machined the double pages together and stitched the whole thing together down the spine.

Inside front cover and page 1

Pages 2 & 3

Pages 4 & 5

Pages 6 & 7

Page 8 and inside back cover

Back cover and front cover

Congratulations if you've got to this point.  Thanks for stopping by and reading to the end.
Bernice