Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Textile Workshop with Petra Meer Day 2

The second day of the workshop started off quietly, with some sitting and sewing of the fabric collages.  However, Petra doesn't like the 'f' word (finished) so we did not have a long time to work on these.


She showed us some embroidery stitches and we did a small sampler of some simple stitches.  We then had a little time to try some on the fabric collages but moved on to the next item we had brought.

My piece of textile that meant something to me was an old embroidery that I had done when I was young and my mother had been teaching me crochet to edge it.  One piece was finished, one was not.  These were stuck on the wall, beside our clothing and paper and fabric collages.

We wrote again and discussed our pieces.  There was no pressure to talk about our writing if we didn't want to.  Petra allowed us to talk and didn't direct the conversation in any particular direction, it evolved according to the needs of the group.

As it turned out, I didn't feel that my textile piece was adding to the direction of my thoughts, so it came down off the wall fairly quickly.

One thing I have learnt from this workshop is that it is good to have a couple of things on the go at once. That way, if you run out of ideas on one, you can move onto the other while ideas germinate quietly. Another is to have your work on show so you can look at it frequently. I have actually tried to accommodate this at home, having come home and rearranged my workroom so that I can have some of my inspirational images in sight while I am working.

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