Embroidery class part 2!

Following on from my first embroidery class post, today I wanted to update on how the embroidery is coming along! 

We have finished our first piece, a small flower sprig that allowed us to practice french knots, stem stitch and satin stitch. I'd like to immortalise the finished piece as a card or a notebook cover. Perhaps as an embroidery class notebook cover, decorative and useful! 

I'm finding the classes so therapeutic that at the moment I just want to embroider everything, so I can feel lots of notebook covers and cards coming on! 

This is our next project! I'd love to say that this is the one I've made, but this is our very talented tutor's piece- a super cute mushroom painted with acrylic paint on canvas and embroidered over the top using stem stitch, satin stitch and french knots. Isn't it so pretty! Such a clever idea to combine the painting with stitch

So today we set about creating our own version of the mushroom! We stretched calico onto our embroidery hoop and traced the image onto the fabric in pencil

Then we had great fun colouring the drawing with acrylics! 

Once dry, we began embroidering the outline of the mushroom in stem stitch. Our homework is to continue adding the embroidery and I'm so looking forward to carrying on with it tomorrow!

At the start of the new year I decided that I wanted this to be a big year for learning so I'm really enjoying having a dedicated time devoted to learning these new skills and I'm looking forward to reflecting what I've learnt in my work. 

New materials

 I've been experimenting with learning Fair Isle knitting recently and I've decided that I'd like to have this as a Winter project. In the meantime, I wanted to make some bright and summery textile jewellery, so here's a sneak peak at what I'll be working on this week!

 I've been gathering off-cuts of Liberty print fabrics from Ebay (this is a new brightly coloured batch, I love them!), as well as hand embroidered tray cloths, and I'd like to combine these with lace and other up-cycled materials. I also wanted to add some extra colour and I'm excited to have discovered these Permaset Eco Friendly screen printing inks. Looking forward to getting to grips with these- I've just started making some handmade stamps using wood blocks and fun foam (more on this later in the week). I'm also going to an embroidery class later this week as I'd like to include some hand embroidery. It's going to be a busy week! 

                                                 

Hand embroidered Tray Cloth

I'm planning to patch strips of the different fabrics together