Breaking Boundaries Summer School

From July 22nd to July 26th I had the pleasure in attending the Textile Study Group’s summer school which was held at Harper Adams University in Schropshire, UK. The theme of the summer school was ‘Breaking Boundaries’. There were three members teaching that week. I had signed up with Anne Wheeler who was looking at structures. As I enjoy my spirals, I thought that this would broaden my subjects and was not disappointed. Anne is a lovely knowledgable fun teacher who has a wealth of experience with structures such as lace making as well as other things. Now you may think of lace as involving fine thread and tiny stitches but not with Ann. We were treated to lace made with wire, heavy strings and threads and whatever one wanted to use. We also used objects such as seed pods which we thoroughly investigated cutting into them and drawing and remaking them with various materials.
I chose to work with a piece of Kozo which is from the mulberry tree. It looks like shrunken up hard bark but when soaked in water, will stretch out magnificently. This can be stitched, dyed, and used for many things. I elected to heavily machine stitch these pieces with various weights of threads and yarns. I am going to continue to stitch into the large wall hanging with various fine threads but will show you the results of my endeavours now. I also made a small piece which I called Round and Round the Mulberry.
This first picture shows Anne teaching us a novel way to make books-yet another structure
The last one is a picture of art made by my friend and fellow student, Donna Jones, who was in the class taught by Sian Martin.