As a group we are all very much staying in and staying safe, which should mean lots of time for creating wonderful textile art pieces. But the sad reality is generally we are finding this extra time more stultifying than inspiring, missing being together as a group, and all the sharing of ideas, thoughts on our work, cake and laughter.
In order to get the creative juices flowing, balls rolling etc etc we have come up with a plan....after some head scratching and sharing of thoughts via email (which seems so much more long winded than a simple chat around the table over a cuppa and piece of wonderful chocolate cake). Sorry did I mention cake again!
We agreed that we would stitch an 8” square page for each other, working in our own style but in the colour-way chosen by the recipient. Somehow between the 6 of us taking part we nearly cover the range of the rainbow, rather appropriately. When we can finally get together we will be able to gift our pages; and each join these pages into a book, which will be a memento from each of the Textile Maids.
We are sharing images as the pages come together, and it’s exciting to see these new works in progress as each Maid plays with favoured techniques and styles: to date we’ve had rust, lutradur, stencilling, dyeing, printing, Suffolk puffs, slow stitching and machine, buttons and beads!
Rosemary chose rich reds, so here’s the results of a happy afternoon rummaging through my stash.
With no time limits we can just enjoy stitching whenever we like, and fit these pages in amongst other UFOs. I’m sure there will be more photos of other pages to follow....watch this space as they say!
Thanks for reading, stay safe!
Debbie
