The fun got under way on Friday night, when I went to Sheena Norquay's talk. I already knew quite a bit about Sheena being inspired by Orkney, where she grew up, as there was a large feature about her some years ago in this magazine
The wonderful colours of the scenery round her childhood home have heavily influenced her colour palette .....
...... and she stitches symbols from Norse legends into her quilts
So after an enjoyable evening on Friday, I was looking forward to the workshop on Saturday ........ and it turned out to be fabulous!! First, we drew a fantasy bird on paper - I based mine on a heron
After transferring the drawing to fabric ...... the fun really began, as we used fabric paints to print all sorts of circles on the birds
I cheated a little bit and used a brush to fill in some of the body! I decided to stick to the two colours of paint that I had, pearlescent red (which looks pink!) and silver
We finished the printing in time for lunch, which was supplied by a local pub ....... delicious lentil soup (sorry, I had eaten half of it before I remembered to take a photo!) .......
...... and trays of very tasty sandwiches
Then it was back to work!
I trimmed the fabric round my bird, added borders, then tacked it to a piece of wadding, ready to stitch. This was the first time I had stitched using an embroidery ring - and I loved it - it just made it so much easier!!
This is a detail of the tail
All too soon, it was time to go home, but not before everyone posed with their birds, with Sheena sitting on the bottom right hand side of the photo ..... and I should say at this point a very big thank you to Sandra and Lorraine, who spent the day keeping us supplied with drinks and served the lunch, and then Sandra took the photo for me
Sheena had given us excellent instructions on how to finish our wallhangings, so yesterday afternoon, I started on the next stage, which was just a little bit scary - trimming away the excess wadding from around the bird - I was worried that I would accidently cut through the fabric as well
The next stage was to layer and baste the wallhanging, then to stitch in the ditch between the centre fabric and the border (I actually find sewing in a straight line difficult, and took three attempts before I was happy with it!)
Having successfully used the embroidery ring on Saturday, yesterday I got out a bigger quilting hoop and set it up.
I stitched round the bird, then checked the back ...... disaster!! The tension had obviously gone haywire, and a lot of the stitches on the back were big loose loops!
After unpicking all the wonky stitching, I decided to leave it there for the day ...... and that's where I'm going to stop today ...... I will tell you more tomorrow, but now it's time for the knitting update. I didn't do any knitting on Saturday evening, as I was somewhat tired after the workshop, but last night I finished the second sock, except for the Kitchener stitch
I have one more ball of sock yarn to use ........ someone recently told me about a method of knitting a sock with an 'afterthought' heel. I'm sorry, I haven't got a link for it, but I just did a search on Ravelry and found it (if you're looking for me on Ravelry I'm Carenza!) I forgot to print out the pattern earlier, so I'll just read the first stage from the laptop when I start knitting later!
ps - why do I still have that magazine? Because of this page, which shows the Callender House wallhanging which I helped to make, and the church banners, a wonderful project which was organised by my friend Grace Graham