Textile 21 and Klimt 10

Textile 21 (the group who meet at Urchfont - not Textile-21, the North West Group I just found on the internet)

I would like to thank Pat Frost and the others for inviting me to spend the day with Textile 21 - I have had the most inspiring day!! Being 'allowed' to become a member of this wonderful group is also an honour and a thrill! The group includes such names as Sue Dove, Jane Wild and of course Maggie Grey!

I spent the morning with my mouth open, drooling and writing notes whilst Jane shared with us her techniques for paper casting and colouring. She even very kindly gave us a 'one I made earlier' piece for us to try her colouring materials. I did not do this because I wanted to bring the piece home, photograph it in it's 'nude' state and colour it later.... Here it is.... She also gave me a piece of cast Lotka paper which is also lovely. Then after the usual wonderful Urchfont lunch I spent a happy few hours looking through Sue Dove's sketchbooks - it is a shame I missed her 'tutorial' last evening. I was able to watch what the others were doing/had done. I am looking forward to the next three sessions, next year. They are a fabulous, inspiring group.

Klimt 10

Finally, once exhausted from the above I did a little work on my Klimt bodice. Not knowing what the format of the day would be I only took some hand work. With my base fabric being 'thick ish' the seams will not lie flat - unless you iron them and with the base fabric being a form of acrylic, heating it to force it to lie flat would make it sort of shrink/melt. If I was making this bodice out of silk, for example, I would iron the seams to one side and top stitch, but because I don't really a) want any top stitching and b) this would make them really fat, I opened out the seams and hand stitched all 10 seams open (on the inside). This was very relaxing to do whilst my mind spun with ideas for future projects all due to the inspiration of this group. I am going to scan all these flat seams as they look lovely and I could use the scans for something too! For the moment the bodice is going to stay on the mannequin whilst I ponder on how I can enhance it and raise the surface. In the meantime I have another tutu project about to start!!

For now I am exhausted and I am going to sink into the sofa with the book Maggie kindly brought with her for me...... Yummy !!