Monday funday

It's always tricky starting a new group, the first 20 mins of the session are spent talking about possible projects, exchanging ideas and thinking through the process of work. There is often some uncertainty about what each student wants to make and how this should be done. Today was one of those sessions, but I can proudly report that after about half an hour everyone was cutting and stitching and chatting about what inspires them and things they wanted to try.

Here are the results:

A lovely racoon from Doodle Stitching, and Cheryl is hoping to continue at home.

A rather cross looking pumpkin pin cushion with a fetching flat hat, to be finished next week:

This is Pierre (!) another french inspired pumpkin pincushion all finished and ready for action of the stitching kind.

Karen started on a collage for the Centre and was really pleased with the progress of her blanket stitch. Over the weeks, I will get the whole group to contribute something.

........and 'trumpet fanfare'........This lovely mobile was started way before the summer holidays. Sarah has put a lot of time and thought into every detail and has enjoyed creating a beaded wonder:

Sadly it was too long to get a decent picture off my camera phone :

So I tried some close-up's, bit out of focus:
You can see the lovely button, bead and embroidery details here:

What can I do with 9 handkerchiefs?

K added sequins and buttons to highlight areas of the quilt, she also embroidered round some of the shapes to add interest.

K found some children's handkerchiefs in a local shop.  They were a selection of popular nursery rhymes and she was keen too make something for her youngest child.  We arranged then on a large piece of fabric so that the overall design worked.  E spent a couple of weeks working on the quilt, mainly stitching by had because she wasn't confident on the machine.  The finished quilt looked great, a really good development form a simple starting point.  E is planning a quilt for herself now and I hope she will have a go on the machine at some point in the future!

Pin cushions galore

My new Time for Me group put needle to felt for the first time on Thursday.  I don't like practicing for the sake of it (unless I take up sky diving of course), so I suggested they start with some simple embroidery worked in a circle and gather it up to make a pin cushion.  I cunningly started with stitching on a button to work around, it started them going round in circles and gave a good feature to top off the cushion.