New workshops: cushion customisation at Ikea, Gateshead

This week I shall be running 'Cushion Customisation' workshops at Ikea, Gateshead. The workshops are free and you can drop by any time between 12-4pm Monday 16th to Friday 20th December. I shall be showing visitors simple and fun appliqué techniques, which you can join in with and make your own appliqué cushion to take away.

Beginners Patchwork and Quilting Class

In the New Year, I shall be starting a new class at Washington Library and Customer Services. The Galleries, Washington, Tyne and Wear, NE38 7RZ. The course starts on Tuesday 14th January 10-12pm, for 11 weeks (excluding half-term). Although, the course is aimed at complete beginners, those who have some experience of patchwork and quilting will also find the course interesting. The course fees are £36 and materials are included - though you are very welcome to bring your own! If you are interested in joining, then you can either contact me or the Library directly on 0191 561 3441.

The Three Sisters

I have been busy working on a series of portraits for an exhibition at The Holy Biscuit, Newcastle upon Tyne. The exhibition 'An Artistic Gathering', will show the work of Patricia Bowles, Ken Elliott, Lisa Enright, Michelle Johnson, Sheelagh Peace and myself.

The exhibition preview will be this Thursday 7th November 6-8pm, and the exhibition will run until the 21st November.

Amongst the work I shall be exhibiting include 'The Three Sisters', which are portraits of my daughters, made using machine and hand embroidery, fabric painting and collage.

The Vanity of Small Differences

During April to September this year I have worked on a fabulous project for Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, which was funded by the Arts Council. I worked with three different community groups over 10 weeks, to create their textile response to Grayson Perry's tapestries.

Here are the finished hangings created by the three groups:

The hangings were made using fabric paint, batik, embroidery, beading, photographic transfer techniques and applique. All of the people involved learnt these new skills 'on the job' and, as you can see, became very proficient at it!

Besides working on the hangings, I also run a weeks worth of school workshops and masterclasses, looking at the ideas of branding, 'Tribes' and identity which Grayson Perry reflects upon in his tapestries.

Textile Masterclasses

Memory Panels

Saturday 20th July, 2013. 10-3pm
Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens
Explore a range of textile methods including applique, printing and embroidery, as you make your own memory panel inspired by the themes of the Vanity of Small Differences exhibition by Grayson Perry. If you would like to bring photos, letters, fabric etc to inspire your personal panel, that would be great.

Creative Cushions

Saturday 3rd August, 2013. 10-3pm
Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens
Explore the themes of branding, fashion and taste in the Grayson Perry tapestries, then use your ideas to create a fabulous cushion cover.

The workshops are £15 per person, payable at the museum shop. All materials needed for these masterclasses will be provided, but you are very welcome to bring items to enhance your decoration. To book sessions ring Jennie Lambert on 0191 553 2323 or email her at jennie.lambert@sunderland,gov.uk

Caretakers of the World, UNITE!

Over the past few weeks, I have been busy working on a piece for an exhibition called 'Responding to the Book', part of the 'Word on the Street' section of the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition which is being held all over the North East of England. The 'Responding to the Book' exhibition is being held at The Holy Biscuit, in Newcastle upon Tyne from saturday 6th April, 2013 for one month.

For this exhibition, I have been working on a 'hooky' mat design using the carpet pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels as inspiration. The piece I am working on, is titled 'Caretakers of the World, UNITE!' As I have done before with my exhibition pieces, I am interested in making an environmental statement, so the sections of the cross are filled with maps of the World and surrounded by enviromentally vunerable images, in a true to time, Celtic design. I have been working with recycled fabric such as blanket wool, coats, jumpers and other clothing.

Here is a photograph of the piece so far, which I hope to finish over the weekend.

Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition and workshop

WOW! It's March already and I've been so busy making and completing different projects that I have forgotten to blog!! Hmm, best not make a habit of it! Currently, I am finishing off a lovely hanging made with 63 Year 5 children. The hanging is a 'Mining Banner' to hang up in their school dinning hall. It will be presented back to the children on Friday - it's looking prety fab and they should be really proud of the fabulous work they have done on it.

Also, I have been very busy with the weekly mat-making group at Sunderland City Library and, already, we are on week 7 - only three weeks left of the course. I will miss the session as there is such a lovely group of women who come along and the designs for their mats are looking pretty smart. We have all enjoyed looking in our local charity shops etc, to recycle clothes and fabrics to put in our mats.

The Wednesday Craft Club at my local school is also going really well, there is a core of about 25 children, boys and girls, who have made 'creatures' from the gloves in the schools lost property box, lovely embroidered pictures in hoops and this week they are making Mother's Day Hearts.

Whilst completing school hangings, preparing for mat-making workshops and Craft Club, I am also working on a piece for an exhibition at The Holy Biscuit, in Shieldfield, Newcastle upon Tyne. The exhibition is inspired by the Lindisfarne Gospels and the organisers are keen to address many modern themes. I have decided to use the 'Carpet' pages in the Lindisfarne Gospels as an inspiration and starting point in my 'hooky' carpet page. My piece is called 'Caretaker's of the World, Unite!'Saturday 6th April and I am running a workshop on Saturday 27th AprilTraditional Rag Rug, 10-12pm at The Holy Biscuit.

Embroidered Fox

I have been troubling myself this week about how to finish off this picture I have embroidered of a fox. I was lucky enough to see a fox out in the snow whilst walking my dog very early one day this week, which inspired me. But, because the embroidered fox is quite detailed, I cannot decide whether to do quite a stylised background, or continue with lots of detail. Troubling! Maybe, sometime this week, I'll get my head round it! I have also been busy with the mat-making course in Sunderland. I find it takes quite alot of preparation, looking for materials for the following week, washing and drying them - especially as most of the fabric is from old wool coats I find in the charity shops. Then there's the lesson planning and collecting the equipment from my studio, as I can't store it at home. The children's craft club was great again this week, 30 children turned up (there was lots of lovely snow outside to compete with!).It was remarkably calm, and the children all seemed confident in what they were doing, so the session was an absolute delight! Currently, I am completing some projects for the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead, one I am particulary excited by is a 'Union' Flag, progged in green, salmon and violet. It looks fab! It has been made by local young women.

A fun and creative activity the girls and I are up to this afternoon, is making hankies for Grandma, using their old Summer cotton dresses and the lovely new sewing machines they had for Christmas. I think Grandma will love them!

New Children's Craft Club

Last Wednesday I started, with a couple of very helpful school Mum's, a Craft Club at the local school. It was open only to children from Year 5 and Year 6, and low and behold, 40 (!) children turned up! It was great! I have worked with all of these children before on large wall-hangings, teaching them different craft techniques over the 6 weeks of making the hangings, and I was pleased to see that they had obviously had so much fun making them, that they have come back for more! The first few sessions, we plan to make some embroidered pictures in hoops bought from (very prompt service). The children are designing their own pictures: some football themed, some for friends birthdays, some are just very cute! As well as this, we are setting up a mat-frame for children to work on when they have had enough of close stitching or would prefer a different project. This is to be a picture of the school crest.

This is a picture of the 'Shipbuilding' wall-hanging I made with the children from Year 5, last year at our local school. They learnt how to batik, quilt, embroider, fabric paint and 'prog' to make the hanging over six weeks. Tomorrow, I am back to Sunderland for the Traditional Mat-making course I am teaching at the City Library. The students are about to start putting pen to hessian to get their design onto the mat-frame. This is when it starts to get exciting! Hope the snow doesn't hinder our progress!

Busy, busy, busy!

Last week was a busy one for me, with meetings at local museums and galleries to plan new programs of work and future projects - one project I am extremely excitied about, but not in a position to talk about it yet;though it does involve working alongside some famous tapestries! I have also been back to running workshops with local young women's groups, such as embroidery and 'sock creatures'; as well as writing lesson plans and schemes of work for my next series of hooky and proggy mat workshops started this week at Sunderland City Library.

I also, have allowed myself sometime to play this week and I have been making some small embroideries of nocturnal animals to use with a school craft group I am working with tomorrow. This is an image of one of the 'hooked' pictures I have made recently, ready for the new mat-making workshops I am running. This picture is a detail of a poppy.

School Craft Club

Tomorrow, I am starting a new craft club at our local school for Year 5 and 6. I have found that over the last few years of working with the school on a number of projects, including local history wall-hangings, that many of the children really enjoy all different craft techniques including sewing, hooky and proggy matting and fabric painting. So, along with some of the mum's from the school, we have decided to get together and start a club! We are starting with embroidery pictures in hoops (as this makes the pictures look fab for display)and there will be a mat-frame set up, too.

New Year Resolutions!

Now that we are having to take down all our lovely Christmas decorations, it reminds me that I really should start making my presents and decorations earlier this year! At my studio in The Biscuit Factory, I sold the only two 'proggy wreaths' I had made within half an hour of my studio opening for the Ouseburn Open Studios event, fabulous but frustrating when I did not have time to make more - as they had taken about 6 hours to make, each!

July is probably a good time to start, or even earlier for many people. My children and other family members, always like something made for Christmas: my husband likes to have a pair of socks, as do a few other family and friends; some friends like to have a silk and tweed recycled covered diary and notebook; my children and friend's children, love to have a new 'friend' knitted! It's always great fun coming up with new designs, working with different materials to create just the right gift.

When I start to think about this, I should probably be starting NOW! But, now that the decorations are down, I feel that I would like to make some Winter decorations, which may then lead me to making some Spring decorations - that will keep me out of trouble, on top of the real work I have to do!

10 New School Window Hangings

Since May 2012, I have been working with over 500 school children from Nursery age to Year 6. The project was for the children to design and create 10 hangings to be hung in their large dinning hall windows, illustrating the school's values. The hangings each needed to be 2 metres by 80 centimetres and to almost create a 'stained glass window' effect when the sun shined.

Every year group was allocated a value and came up with a design for it. These were then draw onto the cotton fabric in the style of the children's designs, then every child from that year group would spend sometime painting on their hanging. The fabric paint we used was COLOURTEX by Specialist Crafts. I have been using this paint for a long time and find it very adaptable. In this case it could be watered down to the right level, so that when light reaches it, the colour almost glows on the right weight cotton.

The 10 hangings are now complete and will be ready to hang in the school dinning hall this week. Which I hope the school and the children love!

 

This is a detail from the hanging painted by the 63 children in the school nursery. Their school value was about Diversity, so they each painted a butterfly, different in shape and colour. The raven appears on all of the hangings, as it is part of the school insignia and a fun image for the children to find on the hangings whilst eating their school dinners.

Rag Rug for Beginners workshop

Rag Rug for Beginners - New Workshop with Louise Underwood

 

Learn to make traditional hooky and proggy mats from scratch. This is a course for absolute beginners. All tools and materials will be provided. The course is for 10 weeks (excluding half-term week), starting Monday morning 14th January 2013, 10-12.15pm.

There may be a small fee for this course but depending on your age and if you are on some beneifits it may be free or a reduced rate.

For booking please contact:

 

Sunderland City Library and Arts Centre,

28-30 Fawcett Street,

Sunderland

SR1 1RE

0191 561 1235



This is a picture of an applique owl I made for the cover of a Natural History bag I made for the Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Liverpool. These bags, and their contents, which included head-dress, large wings and owl 'food' were made for local school children to use whilst visiting the natural history section of the gallery.

 

Made using techniques such hand and machine embroidery, crochet, applique and quilting, the Natural History bags are robust and fun to use! Even more fun to make!

Monday 31st December 2012

We’ve been having a great time with the new sewing machines my two daughters’ received for Christmas and post Christmas birthday. They have been extremely industrious making draw-string bags and patchwork cushions. They have never used sewing machines before and although only 8 & 9 years old, they have both taken to it like a duck to water! Have obviously learnt it through osmosis!

Tuesday 1st January 2013

Welcome to my new blog! I hope you enjoy reading as I enjoy making the mad and fun things that happen daily in my studio and house!