There was a lovely calm and gentle mood
today as the group drifted in and eagerly took up their sewing from last week. We
continued to embroider our leaves for our collaborative family tree with
different threads; chunky, furry, metallic. The textures of hessian, felt, paper
and tinsel have made this a really tactile artwork, with lots of depth and personal history.
Some fabulous ornamental needlework emerged
from our participants – we rediscovered many decorative stitches we hadn’t done
in years: chain, blanket, catch, single feather, french knot, herring bone. We reminisced
the last time we had embroidered this way; a blanket for a baby granddaughter,
a tablecloth for a dining room table, a bed quilt for a first marital home.
Some of us took to drawing onto our leaves
or sticking beads and sequins onto them. The effect was fantastic and everybody
was really proud of their work and marvelled at the skills amongst the group.
We had a birthday girl in the group today - it was Dalip’s 65th birthday! She had kindly brought in a
scrumptious carrot cake, which we shared around the group as we all sang Happy Birthday!
Then we revisited our story boxes, which we
had decorated on our first week in the project. This time, we made something to
go inside them and pop up as a surprise. We each created a miniature forest of bright
rainbow leaves and layered trees inspired by miniature dioramas, which we will be exploring in the coming weeks. These boxes will be used for gathering our own stories during this project.
We used a simple pop up template as we got our heads around the challenges of working in 3D! We'll be finishing these next week and learning a new skill together - feltmaking.
Bryony
No comments:
Post a Comment