Super Saturday- Stratford and THE SUN!

Oh yes, the sun has finally made an appearance and has therefore significantly improved my mood!

A while ago I booked a free-machine embroidery course at Sew Me Something (www.sewmesomething.co.uk). It had taken so long to come around that I had almost forgotten about it. I left Mr Jones at home and ventured off to Stratford-Upon-Avon. Miraculously I managed to get there bang on time despite leaving late and missing the car park. There were a lot of people in costumes, I later found out that it was Shakespeare's birthday so there was a parade in town, sadly Mr Jones and I missed it but worth remembering for next year.

At Sew Me Something I was welcomed by Jules (the owner), Julie (the teacher) and about 6 other participants in the workshop.

We started with the basics of free-machine embroidery, followed by a play on the machines.

My practice embroidery - house, stick-man and penguin

After this we thought about the pattern that we wanted to create. I decided to stick with penguins and set about finding my fabrics and cutting out lots of oval paper templates.

Thinking about the layout and fabrics

The longest part was finding a suitable fabric for my penguins to sit on, I wanted it to be quite bright but also quite iceberg like- apparently this is a tough ask! Once I had settled on my fabrics and had all of my pattern pieces cut out I ironed the fabrics onto some bond-a-web and then cut all of the pieces out.

For the larger pieces of fabric I zig-zag stitched them on. I then ironed down the other pieces of fabric.

Ready for the free-hand part

No came the scary part; the free-hand embroidery. I found this really enjoyable and easier than I had imagined. If I was doing this at home I think I would have been tempted to unpick all of the lines which weren't perfect but as I was thinking about time, I decided to leave them and I am glad that I did because I think it really adds to the effect.

Progressing nicely

Having got to this stage I started to think about eyes. Julie made a fabulous suggestion to use buttons and Jules made it even better by suggesting that I sew them on with orange thread. This is the benefit of workshops rather than working by yourself; the chitter-chatter, the cake and the genius ideas! Julie kindly stapled my finished embroidery onto the frame and my work was complete.

Finished!

I ran back to the car (as my parking ticket was running out) with my penguins proudly on display!

Once at home I continued the crafty theme by doing some screen-printing in the garden with Mr Jones

Preparing for some screen-printing in the sunshine

Mr Joneses raven stencil

Trying with poster paint - not a huge success but OK

Trying with emulsion - just needs a stronger stencil

And then made a liberty patchwork cushion which Mr Jones had bought for me at Christmas but I hadn't found the time to stitch until now.

Liberty cushion

We finished the day, very happily, with a film and a curry!

Love,
Mrs Jones
x