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Sunday, September 23, 2007

Exhausted!!

I have come back from the first weekend of the combined City and Guilds Heirloom and Machine Embroidery courses at Urchfont, with Janet Crowther, and I am exhausted!!

There are 8 of us on the course - 2 taking the Machine Embroidery course - Jane and Molly and 6 on the Heirloom course - Maggie, Anna, Pauline, Hazel, Nina and myself. Most of these ladies have had a much, much longer journey home than I did and I hope that when they get home they are not as exhausted as I am. I have been asleep for a couple of hours since arriving home!!
I think I am so exhausted partly because of the emotional roller coaster my life has been over the last few weeks, partly because of the amount of work covered this weekend and partly because of the amount of homework we have to do!!.

To give you one small flavour of the course for today........ We arrived on Friday night and were straight into design theory (as is the norm with C&G). A colour wheel - what another one - I have already done 6 colour wheels as I have done several C&G and other courses before. To say I was frustrated about doing another is an understatement. However, I did grit my teeth! Thankfully Janet asked us to stitch one rather than the usual painted one. OK - I did stitch the thing and in fact was rather pleased that I had done it. Look - I had to take a photo - it was lovely........ I say WAS lovely because on Saturday morning, for our first task, Janet said - 'you know that cheese grater you were asked to bring - well get that out and your colour wheel and attack it'!!!! Shock, horror - destroy my lovely colour wheel - I wanted to treasure it having given in to make the thing. Feeling a little 'distressed' myself I set to distressing my lovely colour wheel............
Once I had attacked it with the cheese grater, I washed it in coffee and then burnt it with the heat gun!!! Here it is now - so much better........ This start really set the scene for the rest of the course and has made us realise that as we are looking at distressing techniques there is little point in being too precious about the 'original' as the effect we are looking for is aged and distressed.

I need to unpack the boxes, start writing up my notes and re-writing my homework list so that over the next few weeks I can keep up.
It is going to be a fantastic journey and I hope to share more with you as time goes on.!! THANKS JANET - I know you will read this.

8 comments:

Becky Mairi Farrell said...

I love both versions of your colour wheel. It must have been hard to take the steps to distress it but the result is so cool.

I hope you can find some energy and start to feel better

Donna said...

the distressed fabric is much more interesting, though there was nothing "wrong" with the colour wheel :-)

Julie said...

Eeeek! I so hate taking something I'm pleased with " a step further" or even a whole mile further! You were very brave to attack your colour wheel - the outcome is great. Good luck with the course and finding energy.

arlee said...

:} Good point about getting the "perfect" when we know we're going to torture after! Must remember that myself!
Relax, rejuvenate!

Unknown said...

That was a challenge! I love the result. Looking forward to hearing more about the course, hope you feel better quickly

Angela said...

Wow what a great start to the course. I love both versions of your colour wheel, but the distressed version is really interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what other wonderful pieces you will be making from this course

Gina said...

Both versions of the colour wheel were fabulous... but the second one just a little bit more fabulous and interesting! Very brave to attack your work like that, but worth it.

Susan Lenz said...

Hi!
The tone of this blog sounds so upbeat and excited...even when forced to make another color wheel and then shred it. I hope this course keeps your spirits high and your creativity pumping.
Susan