Devore in a day workshop

Hi all - back from a long period of communications blackout.  We had no phone or internet for 2 months.........I don't even want to explain why- too complicated.  Anyway am back from the wilderness and looking for some nice creative pictures to share with you.

The devore class at Cottenham Village College- all students work (some of it 'in progress"). Forgive me,  it's been so long now since we did the workshop I've forgotten whose is whose so other I can't give credits where they are due. Enough to say - well done all they are absolutely sumptuous!

Alice in Ramsey

 These are the banners I worked on with the children from Ramsey Junior School Ramsey Junior Schooland the Spinning Infants School for the Alice in Wonderland production at the Junior School. The play was directed by the the very dedicated teacher Ms J Charot and was a great success - as was the final celebration featuring the Mad hatter himself and some wonderful hats made by a group of women who live in the Red House working with Sandra Scott whose work you can see at  Sandra's blog. The project was funded by Vital Communities Arts Council East, and facilitated by Viv Peters, arts development organiser supreme!

Banners drying in my studio after being heat fixed and sprayed with fire proofing

Each child designed and screenprinted one square.

And the final celebration with the mad hatter and his fabulous circus skills workshop

and a mad hat made by group working with Sandra

Amazonka  - Cary Outis

caryoutis.com is about the 2nd most interesting site you'll ever view. After mine.

Transform a T-shirt

Some pictures from "Transform a T-shirt" - Screenprint workshop at Melbourn Village College run by stART.  Young people chose shirts from a pile of jumble and screen printed them. We had a lot of fun and a great way to give new life to an old shirt!

Hand Dyed silk - Betty

Nuno Felted scarf on hand dyed silk chiffon - Gill

Hand dyed cotton & wool then felted - Betty

Sideways view of Phillip's silk scarf Inkus

Carol's Wizard of Oz scarf

Diana's scarf - detail

And what it looks like on!

Gill - hand dyed fleece, using acid dyes

Phillip's ever shrinking scarf

Jane - nuno - twice felted - definately worth the extra effort!

And Karen's nuno with soft edging.

Fantabulous work done by adult learners on the 5 week Dyeing to Felt course which finished today at Cottenham Village College CVC. I only wish I'd taken more photos!

Devore Day!!!!

Ah devore - the process of burning away certain fibres in order to reveal the fabric below, creating subtle and beautiful effects.

This is a very exciting workshop where you will make a scarf by screen printing onto velvet with devore paste, then dye it using both procion and acid dyes. Take note though that materials will be quite expensive for this workshop but you will learn lots of skills in a single session and with christmas coming up it would make a very special handmade present for someone.

At Cottenham Village College CVC Workshops on 19 Nov 2011 from 10am - 4pm - Cost £30 + materials. Contact CVC and ask for a full pamphlet with more details.

Isleham School curtains

I thought it's time I uploaded some pics of some recent school & community arts projects.  These are images from a project I worked on with Isleham School.  The school wanted some curtains to cover open storage areas in the classrooms. The class had been working on a Fenland theme  and we used this as our starting point. Each curtain had a different focus - traditional tools and implements, wildlife on land, and wildlife under water. The class did a good amount of preparatory work befor I came in - looking at museum artefacts, nature and doing sketches. On the day, they drew their images up to the correct size. We looked at how we could simplify drawings and the children ( 10 & 11 yr olds) cut out their pictures and screen printed them on the curtains.

I was really impressed with the standard of work!  Well done to all who took part - young people, teachers- the wonderful Mrs Chapman and TA's   Isleham school

Screen print taster

And  a Screen print taster day to be held at Art van Go   www.artvango.co.uk

Here are some pictures of my own work to give you some idea of what can be achieved.  But remember that my aim as a teacher is to encourage you to find your own style and to develop your own way of working - wheather you want to achieve a very graphic end or a more serendipitous playful result

Dyeing to Felt

I've got an exciting new course about to start next week:  Dyeing to felt at Cottenham Village College.  The aim is to make 5 scarves in 5 weeks!  The course includes various felting techniques with an emphasis on exploring the creative possibilities of nuno felt and the processes involved in dyeing and cross dyeing to achieve really exciting colour in your felts. I'm really enjoying doing some new work as samples for this course - felt is just so sumptuous! and I'm loving the process. More info from www.cvcweb.net

Collision carnival _ Milton Country Park

This was the big event- where all the carnival groups came together at Park Life, in Milton Country Park. Looking through my photos - I realise I've got lots of lovely images but I'm trying to choose ones that don't show small children's faces because of permissions.  Suffice to say it was an exhuberant, happy, noisy parade. The sun came out despite a threatening weather forecast. Sandra Scott sandra scott and I ran a workshop on the day and made lots more costumes with children and their parents so that they could join the parade. Andy O Hanlan made some kind of crazy vuvuzela - like horn from drinks cans with kids and they managed en mass to produce a phenominal racket with them.
The stilt walkers were there, there were some drums, some fabulous masks made by mask-maker William Tombs................

and then we dismantled all the giant puppets - after all where do you store such a thing? It's a good thing - we'll have to make new ones next time.

carnival - Special Needs

I worked with young people from Meldreth Manor which is a school for young people with physical & learning difficulties. Each learner made a sort of giant lollipop which attached to their wheelchairs for the carnival parade.

We used sensory materials which rustled, rattled, crackled, sparkled and shone! They looked and sounded spectacular and everyone enjoyed exploring the materials while making them as well as taking part in the final parade!

Carnival Skirts - recycled......

Thsi time it's at Melbourn Village college Activity Week- that's right the teenagers....... but this time the project focussed on links between the college and the older residents at Vicarage Close Sheltered housing.

Once again - I am relying heavily on Kirsten's excellent stART collision carnival photos at the stART website and while you're there check out what other activites are planned stART- you may want to join in!

Most of the young people made their costumes out of card. It was interesting to see how differently they approached them from the infants at Linton. The secondary school young people were really interested in structure - developing and extending out from their card collars making some really imaginative and in some cases quite humorous costumes.

I managed to get a great big bag of selvedge edges which the girls used to make these great hooped skirts - I got them from the newly opened scrapstore in March ( The place not the month) Fenland Scrapstore  This is a  new resource started by Atelier East - it's well worth a visit - they've got a really great selection of amazing stuff.

Also Cary built a proper aluminium carnival backback which a couple of the lads attached giant eyeballs on stalks to.

We made a lot of costumes _ I think I worked with about 130 young people over 2 days and during that time we also took a small group of the young people to do a workshop with the senior citizens at the sheltered housing scheme.

Giant Puppet Melbourne

This time at Melbourn Fete- and there are lots more pics at the stART website

stART collision Carnival

We worked outside the Artivan to build a giant Robo- puppet, which paraded aroung the arena towards the end of the day. It's next outing will be at Parklife in Milton Country Park.