Delicate Stitches Workshop…

On the 15th April I went to The Eden Workshop to spend the day with artist Helen Walsh of Delicate Stitches. I first saw her work on exhibition in Farfield Mill and fell in love with her machine embroidered birds, they are amazing. This is a style of working I love, drawing with pens and traditional materials scares me silly but drawing with a sewing machine doesn’t worry me at all!

Months before and completely by chance I found out she was going to be running a workshop near by and I signed myself up immediately. I patiently waited 6 ish months and the day finally arrived!

It was a fantastic day, we spent the first part of the morning practising the skills that Helen had showed us, then selected a template and fabrics and set to work. I decided to have a practice of the over all shape before I started on the real thing.
Obviously, or maybe not…I chose a kingfisher!                     The first job was to cut out some fabrics to applique on to the base fabric using our templates. The templates I used were designed by Helen specifically for these workshops.
We then used bondaweb to attached the pieces to the base fabric and after that is was drawing time! Adding the details and permanently attaching the coloured fabrics to the base….
It was such a fantastic experience, I will definitely be signing up for more workshops!

I am so thrilled with the finished result. I almost can’t believe I did this! The trouble is it’s quite addictive. So as soon as I got home…well the sewing machine was still out…I made another…
I think it turned out rather well! It makes a great addition to my creature wall in our living room…