Falling Leaves

I promised you more posts with photos of last week's activities and this is the first with work from my Young Embroiderers group who met on Saturday. Our branch of the Embroiderers Guild is having an exhibition next year and the Young Embroiderers have been invited to take part in a group challenge and have their work exhibited alongside work from our "Old" Embroiderers.

 

 

The challenge is to produce an A5 sized piece of work to the theme "Arboreal". Given all the lovely Autumnal leaves starting to appear I thought it would be fun to do some printing with leaves as well as introducing the girls to the tradition of Kantha stitching. I very quickly made the sample above (I own up, it was Friday night, the night before our meeting) to give them an idea of what they might do... and this is what they came up with...

 

Lorna, a brand new member finished this beautiful piece of stitching above.

Shaan also finished her piece... another example of beautiful stitching. I bought some new variagated thread for the girls to use and underestimated how popular it would be. They all wanted to use it!

 



 

The piece above is by Martha who had very definite ideas about having her leaves coming off the edge of her frame with minimal stitching... very effective too. I think she has achieved a really modern looking piece of work.

 

Bluebell, one of our younger members finished her piece with these lovely lines of stitch (in that variagated thread again!)

 

And Francesca, another of our younger members finished hers. I have a sneaky suspicion that Francesca enjoyed the printing more than the stitching but she has still managed a beautiful piece of work.

 

I should also mention Hannah, who not only has almost finished her beautiful piece of embroidery - I love the movement she has achieved in her stitching - but also helped me teach the session. As part of an art award that she is doing at school, Hannah has to share an art skill, so she stood up in front of the group and very ably demonstated how to do the printing with the leaves. Well done Hannah!

 

Ten of our members still have to finish their embroideries so I will no doubt be showing you those in the future, but they are not alone. I started another piece in class (pictured above) and still have to finish mine. I'm rather addicted to the patterns formed by the Kantha stitch.

 

When I was picking up supplies for the Young Embroiderers from Art Van Go on Friday (are you impressed how well I plan ahead), I also managed to have a look around their current exhibition "Making Stories" which is fabulous and well worth a look. Lots of stitch and mixed media work. It's on for another two weeks... so do try to pop in if you live nearby!