A Dash of Paint...

As promised here are some photos from our recent Free Machine & Painting Workshop...

It was a wonderful day with twelve students eager to learn and then thrilled at the results a layer of paint can add to a piece of work (may have some converts to painting). Thank you ladies for allowing us to share your work.

It was also a sad day as this was our last workshop and Carolyn couldn't be present as her daughter was in hospital after a traffic accident. But I am pleased to say that Rebecca is back home and I'm sure along with me you send her your best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Thank you from both of us for the support we have been given, its been a pleasure to share our passion for textiles and stitch with you all and we have enjoyed making new friends along the way. We will keep our flickr and our blog open so we can post any news of future adventures.

We hope you all continue to enjoy your creative journey.

Best wishes Sue & Carolyn x

Stitched Art Exhibition...

Carolyn and myself along with ten other textile artists are busy preparing ourselves for this...

Sat 20th Sept - Fri 26th Sept

We have over a hundred pieces to show, so it should be a wonderful exhibition. Two members of the group will be there each day to chat with and answer any questions. I will be there on the Tuesday with Margaret from 10am - 4pm.
Heartlands is a wonderful venue with free entry to the museum and exhibition, a very good cafe and childrens play area.

Visit http://textilemaids.blogspot.co.uk/ to see some of the work that will be exhibited and read the design processes.

Hope to see you there
Sue

Saints on Tour...

Grosvenor Exhibitions are taking the Saints of Cornish Churches Exhibition on tour. So, if your friends and family live near any of the venues below be sure to tell them it's worth a visit

Malvern  - October 2015
Ardingly - January 2016
Edinburgh - February 2016
Duxford - March 2016
Exeter - April 2016

The organizers are still waiting to hear if the NEC will be added to the list.

The weather is to glorious to be inside so I'll pop back soon with photos from yesterdays Free Machine & Painting workshop.

Hope you're enjoying the heat wave, back soon
Sue

Saints at the Cathedral...

This afternoon I was stewarding at Truro Cathedral for the Saints of Cornish Churches Exhibition and as promised I've taken a few snaps to share with you. Hopefully I've got most of the quilts, but I couldn't make a note of the makers, but you will see most have their Saints names on them.

There was a section of the cathedral that was closed off, but how could I resist this floor, so I managed to poke my camera through the gates.

And finally here is our piece, you will find a description of the process in a previous blog...

St. Enoder

There was a steady stream of visitors throughout the afternoon and the comments books is full of praise for the exhibition and the amount of work involved by the makers.

Back soon
Sue

Exhibition Reminder...

Just a quick mention that the Saints of Cornish Churches Exhibition at Truro Cathedral starts Monday 30th June until Monday 14th July.

Please try and support this exhibition, there is never enough of these events in Cornwall and a lot of people have put so much hard work into it, from the organisers to the makers.

Keep an eye out for our piece on St. Enoder and I'll be stewarding on Friday 4th July from 2.30 to 5pm if you would like to pop in and say hello.

Hope to see you there
Sue

Crossing the border...

At 7.30 last Saturday morning we set off for Honiton to visit South West Quilters at Awliscombe. It was a lovely drive up and leaving so early meant we missed the holiday traffic. We were invited there to do our Square Strip Cushion Workshop, which was inspired by a slate water feature I saw at Hampton Court Palace Flower Shop a few years ago.

After a brief explanation and a word of caution from us that Quilt-As-You-Go is an addictive method, everyone got into the swing of things. Here is a snap of the work in progress...

work in progress

Thank you to everyone for making us so welcome and to Gill for arranging our visit and providing us with a delicious lunch. We'd love to see some photos of finished cushions please.

Our Free Machine & Painting Workshop is booking up nicely, but there's still time for you to book and learn how to free machine a variety of patterns and then highlight areas of the stitched design with paint.

Free Machine & Painting workshop

You can book via our website through Paypal or by printing the booking form and sending with a cheque to the address provided.

I hope you're enjoying the beautiful weather and like me, taking some time to enjoy the garden.
Bye for now
Sue

Such joy and relief...

The Saints quilt is finished and ready for the exhibition at Truro Cathedral from 30th June to 14th July. As you may know we are great fans of Kandinsky's work, so we've used his style as our inspiration by stacking the carved images, then overlaying lines to represent the sundial, lead markings on the windows and the arches.

Obviously I can't show you the whole thing just yet, but here is a section and a brief summery...

St. Enoder

This piece is based on a time line starting with a painted footprint onto hand dyed fabric showing the changes St. Enoder has gone through over the years. We then used hand dyed scrim for the font and the carvings on the altar and pews.
We overlaid a window to represent looking through time made from bias strips using hand dyed fabric. It was then a case of bringing it up to date with machine quilting and finally the couched lines. For the binding we used more hand dyed fabric in purple this time, which is a colour often used in religion.

I'll put the whole piece up when the exhibition has started, but I hope you've enjoyed seeing this detail and if you get a chance please visit the exhibition, many people have put a lot of hard work into this and it's wonderful for Cornwall, so we want it to be a success. I'm stewarding on Friday 4th July from 2.30-5pm if you'd like to pop in for a chat about our piece or anything else.
Also, after this exhibition the quilts are going to be travelling to quilt shows around the country, so keep an eye out you may get a chance to see them there.

And finally, we had our Recycled Logs Workshop last week which was wonderful and everyone got into the spirit of recycling clothes, furnishings, even 42 year old lace. Here are a few pieces of work in progress...

Recycled Logs Workshop

Saturday we're off to South West Quilters in Honiton with our Square Strip Cushion Workshop, so we'll be sure to take some snaps to show you next week.

Thanks for reading
Sue

The joy of stitch and gardening...

Apologise for the absence but I've been rather occupied with this...

Saints Exhibition

 ...as we mentioned a while ago we are making a wall hanging as part of the Saints Exhibition and as always the deadline has crept upon us. I've finished the quilting so now it's time for the hand embellishments which will be a nice evening job.

It's not been all work though, I had a chance this week to go to a workshop by the wonderful textile artist Jean Littlejohn. I can't remember the last workshop I attended so it was nice to sit back and let someone else take over. It was a lovely day of hand stitching techniques with bark/trees in mind. We started with thick wool, very large stitches and continued to build the layers to form a raised surface.

building layers

We then went on to a different stitch with foiling and chiffon over the top and filling the spaces with stitch. I love this result, it will need a lot more hand stitching but it's a good sample with lots of possibilities.

stitch with foil and chiffon

And finally...we stitched onto water soluble fabric and tried Jean's embellisher. Now, I've eyed these machines from a distance thinking...I don't need one of those...HA!!! How wrong was I, it was the same feeling of freedom you get from free machining but without thread, so if I go missing at any point you'll know I'm in the sewing shed with something new to play with. Here is my small sample so you can see how easily I'm led!

embellished sample

A quick garden snap for you, last year my dear friend Fran gave me some foxgloves, so I thought as they are so gorgeous I would share them with you...

Don't you just love this time of year in the garden, with Chelsea Flower Show to inspire us and the bonus this year of Monty Don presenting.

Thanks for reading, bye for now
Sue

Changing Times...

Dear Friends,

As life commitments change it is with great sadness that we have taken the decision to dissolve Beyond Patchwork.

We are continuing until after our existing workshops - Recycled Logs on Thursday 5th June and finally Thursday 24th July and our old favourite Free Machine and Painting.

Thank you to everyone who has come to our workshops and to the groups that have made us so welcome. We have met many fantastic people and we would like to thank you all for you kind support.

While this decision hasn't been taken lightly, it will allow us more time to use the experiences gained for our personal work and we are sure to bump into you on the quilting circuit.

Thank you all for four wonderful years.

Carolyn and Sue

Begin Patchwork...completed

Here are five of our ladies with their wonderful quilts from our Begin Patchwork Course. From left to right we have Ruth, Christine, Caroline, Pat and Denise...

Begin Patchwork Quilts

..just a little hand stitching to finish but I think you'll agree they are looking rather gorgeous. Thanks ladies it's been a lovely six weeks, we thoroughly enjoyed your company.

Here's another snap for you this time from Linda, who kindly brought her finished piece to show us from a Fabric Collage Workshop we did recently at Creative Textile. Such a beautiful piece of work which even has lichen attached. Thanks Linda, it's always nice to see finished pieces and allowing us to share it here.

Linda's Collage

 
Hope you enjoyed seeing these pieces.
Sue

Better late than never...

As promised here are some photos from our latest workshops. Carolyn mentioned in her last post how we had a lovely day with Trevithick Quilters and our Marvellous Markals.
After demonstrating the technique for applying Markals everyone ran with it, from using their garden as inspiration to gathering vegetation from around the building.
Here is a taster of some of the pieces created...

As you can see it was a very productive day with beautiful work being created. Thank you ladies for the warm welcome and lovely lunch. We had a wonderful day and the journey brought back memories of visiting my Granny in Knave-go-By as a child.

To finish, here's four of our Begin Patchwork ladies and their beautiful quilts, just the borders and binding next, aren't they looking wonderful...

Begin Patchwork - work in progress

Thanks for reading, enjoy the Bank Holiday.

Sue

What a busy couple of weeks!!

Well, here I am again, after a busy, but good couple of weeks.  I have reduced my hours at work now, so you should hopefully hear more from me from now on!! 


We, as a family had a lovely Easter Break which was spent on Dartmoor celebrating my husbands birthday. The children and grandchildren joined us for the Easter weekend and we had a couple very lovely walks over the moor.  Beautiful even on a wet and windy day, although I am pleased to say for the most part it was sunny and warm!  Our youngest Granddaughter Mia, every the intrepid explorer (at 4) found a sleeping Adder, although after coming into contact with her wellied foot, it wasn't asleep anymore.  I am pleased to say that she (and the Adder) survived the ordeal un-scathed!

Yes Tor

Since we got back Sue and I have been busy with workshops and have visited two groups and had week 5 of our Begin Patchwork course.

Sue has already shown you the photos from our Fabric Collage workshop, and I am afraid that I do not have any to show you from the other days, but Sue does so hopefully you will see them soon.  As normal the work was lovely and the company great.  Thank you to Creative Textiles and Trevithick Quilters for making us so welcome.  We hope to see you both again and would definitely like to see photos of your finished projects, please!

The quilts from the 'Begin' workshop are coming along really well and we are both delighted at how they are looking.  I think celebratory cakes are in order for the final day!!

As well as the new date for Free Machine Embroidery we are looking forward to the Recycled Log and Marvellous Markals workshops, all taking place in June and July.  Please see our website for more information.

You can follow us not only on the blog but also on facebook at Beyond Patchwork and on twitter at @beyondpatchwork.  You can also contact us on enquiries@beyondptachwork.co.uk

We look forward to hearing from you

Bye for now

Carolyn

Requested Workshop...

As you know from an earlier post we had a number of requests for our Free Machine Quilting Workshop.
Therefore, we would like to let you know we have set a date for 24th July at Fraddon Village Hall from 10am - 4pm.

Free Machine Quilting

This workshop is suitable for beginners or more experienced sewers. We will guide you through the process, show you a variety of patterns and then highlight areas of the stitched design with paint. This new fabric can then be used in future projects, such as a book cover or purse.

Hope you can join us and learn this very enjoyable technique.

Buy for now
Sue