Cas Holmes workshop

This is very late but wanted to share some images taken on the Cas Holmes workshop back in February at West Dean college, Sussex.

The course was entitled

 'Using the Found - Stitch, Cloth and Memory'

We were encouraged to think green and use what we found and in this instance that was old textiles. old table linen, garments, embellishments etc.

We used all parts of the textiles, hems, cuffs seams in fact anything. We made stamps out of textiles and used stitch and fabric 'mark making' activities.

This is one side of my 'stamp'

Our substrates were old fabrics and paper. After producing an array of both by printing, dyeing or painting we used our stamps to create surface decoration.

This sample clearly shows the use of 'holey' piece of fabric used to print the blue strips. In the burgundy strips I used a high relief piece old lace.

Here this image shows a range of substrates and printing/stamping.

This was my favourite piece.

 It was from all of this that we then produced collages. Cas introduced us to her method of using wall paper paste to adhere the pieces together. Once this was dry I spent a joyful few hours free machine embroidering on top.

This sample used papers, lace that I used as a stamp, fruit tea bag paper.

 

 

This was an exercise when Cas gave us some random pieces that we had to incorporate into our collages. I found this challenging as I thought that I knew where I was going but a curved ball like this took us all out of our comfort zone.

 

This is the collage that I did eventually finish and mount. Much happier when in control.

 

 

By the end of the four days I was thinking about what I wanted to achieve in terms of the way I felt about the textiles that I was using rather  than let a technique lead me. This is a new way of thinking in relation to textile art but when I thought about it I have actually used this approach in the past, especially when using old textiles that mean something to me as in this piece entitled 'Memories', it was inspired by a piece of fabric that my mother bought when I was a baby but she never got round to making it up. the salmon colour has always staying with me and it sparked the colour choice for this piece of work.

 

Cas's teaching style is relaxed yet challenging, I thoroughly enjoyed the 4 days.