Flying the Flag for Good Mental Health

Jane Frost has been creating a wonderful art-filled courtyard garden for Arts and Mind . It is in a specialist therapeutic facility for children and families.  

Jane asked me to make some flags that would bring colour and movement to the garden.  We had some ripstop nylon and, well....... the colour were irresistable!  

 

Here we have a test flight!

The designs are drawn from some beautiful screen printed bunting made by the children in  workshops - I don't have a picture of these so you'll have to trust me on that.

This whole project has been made possible by funding from Children in Need.

Arbury Carnival Workshops

 

The first carnival workshop, this year, for Arbury Carnival with Kettles Yard.  You can guess the theme!

Cambridge News

And if you'd like to take part come along to a costume workshop see details:
Costume workshops

Kite Making Workshop

Family Workshop Saturday

Families can have fun making their own kites on Saturday, May 2.
Local Textiles artist Ricki Outis is hosting family kite making workshops at Haddenham Galleries.

Read more: http://www.ely-news.co.uk/Family-kite-making-workshops-Haddenham-Galleries/story-26380333-detail/story.html#ixzz3YiBebU9d

 

Lets go fly a kite! But first we have to make a kite to fly.
The theme is ‘Fearsome Faces, Funny Faces’ – you design the features to create your own unique flying kite with a chance to test fly and troubleshoot – these kites really do fly.
Perfect fun for all the family!!!
£7 per child. Parents free.
Booking essential.
Please call us on 01353 749188.

Screen Printed Book

What to do with all those test prints, demo prints and scraps of fabric that have 'gone wrong'?  Well as a great lover of books as magical objects in their own right, here is my solution:

2 items of news from Cottenham Village College:

Firstly the Summer School brochure is out!  That's something to look forward to on a wintery day. 
Here's the link:   Summer School

and to see you through to the Spring, a new Wednesday morning class starting after half term:

Felting Studio
5 fabulous felting mornings at Cottenham Village College.

This 5 week guided study to wet felting will be great for beginners but also an opportunity for those with more experience to try out some new ideas and be inspired.

 We will revisit the basics - richly textured panels, nuno felt,
lattices,scarves and ruffles. More experienced learners will be shown ways to develop more complex surfaces and forms.

Fee £75 (£56 concessions)
for 5 weeks

If anyone is interested, you need to book soon because next week is half term and the college staff will be away, so:

For more course details, contact: Cottenham Village College

and for booking form http://community.cvcweb.net

Felt a Beret Workshop

Berets,,,,,,,yes!  

The thing about berets is that you can make so many different things from one humble process.

Of course you can make a discreet and elegant beret, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's warm, it's wearable and it's easy to make, especially if you are a first time felter. So much nicer, in fact if you make it yourself with subtle shades of wool and beautiful surface decorations.  

Or you can stretch yourself and make a veritable artist's beret extraordinaire- grand and sumptuous.  You can wear this one out to a gala, or just keep yourself warm in your artist's garret through the winter. 

Making berets is fun!  The pattern is so simple, you can really play with the shape and take it in unexpected directions.  A good workshop for beginners and for intermediate felters.  

Contact Cottenham Adult Learning  if you'd like to come along.  This is  a day school on Sat 24 January from 10.00am - 4.00pm.  It's only £30/£23 plus any materials you use.

And I can't think of a nicer way to spend a Saturday in January than being up to my elbows in suds, talking textiles with other like minded people!

2015 Adult Classes Ricki Outis

A new year, with lots of creative promise!

I thought I'd list any open adult classes that have been confirmed and dates so you can book ahead if you are interested:


Scrap and Chat
admin@care-network.org.uk 
Walnut Tree Cafe, Rectors Hall, Colne Road, Earith.

For over 55's who live in or near Earith, Bluntisham or Colne,  come and join our friendly group on a Tuesday morning for a free scrap booking and reminiscence session. We alternate working on a group project with working on your own personal scrap book. This is a very welcoming, fun and creative class. No previous artistic experience required!

Classes have started but we are always happy for new people to join. We will be running until 10 Feb 15.   There will be no class on the 27 Jan 15. 


Felt a Beret
Felt Beret info
Cottenham Village College
24 Jan 15  Saturday Day School   10am - 4pm

A fun day doing wet felting to create a unique beret. This handmade take on an old classic means that you can personalise both the shape and the surface design to make something elegant and stylish or crazy and eccentric (or a bit of both!). It’s a good workshop for both beginners and for those with some felting experience in felting to learn the basics of wet felting and the use of resist shapes.


Felting Studio
Felting Studio info 
 Cottenham Village College
25 Feb 15  Wednesdays for 5 weeks.   9.30am - 12.30pm    - mixed ability class.

This 5 week guided study to wet felting will be great for newcomers but also an opportunity for those with more experience to try out some new ideas and be inspired .

We will be revisiting the basics - richly textured panels, nuno felt, lattices, and scarves. More experienced learners will be shown ways to develop more complex surfaces and forms.



Screen Printing on Fabric
Cott V. C. 
Cottenham Village College
16 May 2015  Saturday day School    10am - 4pm

 Bring along your fabrics and leave with  great pile of unique printed cloth with your own designs. A screen and inks will be provided for the day. This is a good opportunity for textile artists to come along and create their own fabrics for stitch or display.
A studio session for all abilities.


Thermofax Printing - 
Design and Print your own Label.
Textiles in Focus workshops

Textiles in Focus, Cottenham village College
 Friday 20 Feb 2015 from 2.00 - 4.00pm  or Sunday 22 Feb 2015 from 2.00 - 4.00pm

Design and make an easy to print label for your textile work by making a miniature thermofax with your own personal signature. Develop some interesting backgrounds and by the end of the session you will have a batch of gorgeous labels you can sew into your next creation.


Screen Print Textiles Studio 
White House Arts info 
 White House Arts
20th and 21st June 10.00am-4.00pm  

A whole weekend of screen printing is really wonderful.  You can really develop your designs and build up layers of print.  It is a great opportunity to work in a studio atmosphere with individual support from the tutor. The emphasis as always is on the experimental and developing your own design style, using screen fillers, vylene and paper stencils with the silk screen to create patterned and painterly effects on fabric.


Sensational Screen Printing 
Summer School 

Cottenham Summer School 2015

27 July - 31 July 2015 
I can only give you the dates for this one as the brochure is not out yet.  Just to say that a weekend of screen printing is good, but  a whole week is even better.  Suffice to say that students always say they wish they had a second week as we get to the end of the first one. The brochure usually comes out at the end of February and I advise you to book early - this course fills up very quickly. Send your name and adress to the college so that they mail you a copy as soon as it comes out.


And there you have it - a whole blog post with no pictures!!!
I'll have to do something about that......

New Felt Class for Beginners, Ely

Wishing you all a very happy and creative New Year!

And just a quick note about a new felt making  class for beginners that starts at Ely College on the 13th Jan 2015.  For more details see Ely College  

There will be a free taster session on the 6 Jan 15 at 7.00pm for an hour, so if you want to try it out and find out a bit more about the class, come along then.  No need to book, just turn up about 10 minutes before and go to the reception which is in the new building at the college.  Looking forward to seeing you there!

Photos onto Fabric

If there is anyone who would like to learn some of the techniques used in the WW1 hanging and more, I will be running a 5 week course at Cottenham Village College on the subject.  It will be on Wednesday mornings starting from 24 September 2014.  

We will be exploring lots of different ways to transfer images onto fabric.  These will include cyanotype/ blueprint,transfer papers,  gel medium / bondaweb and thermofax prints. These are wonderful techniques for making memory cloths or for textile artists who want to incorporate digital images and  create their own unique and personal fabrics.
All abilities are welcome.

You can contact the college on 01954 288751 or community@cvcweb.net  to register and to get a materials list for the first week.

It's going to be a really fun course!

Memories of WW1 Textile - The community

Although I have been the 'artist' on this project what I've loved most about the whole process is that it has been a true collaboration. The Hunts Archive pulled out all sorts of wonderful resources for us.The components of the panels were all made by students from the Ivo School with hands-on help from both their History and Textiles teachers. My wonderful mother, Resa Selsick, arrived just in time to help me with the mammoth task of sewing the panels up. And the collaboration extends to the display 'in the box', shown below.

The Textiles teacher from the Ivo school came up with the wonderful idea of using an old suitcase as part of our display and the Norris museum managed to source one of these.

One of the students from the school did a collage of various newspaper articles and letters we found in the archive and the museum.  I made up a photoscreen from this and we used it as a cloth that draped from the ceiling into the suitcase.

We masked out areas of the main print and included images of some of the young men from St Ives who went to war

We used this as a base for other wonderful things made by the community for the show.

These included little stuffed hearts made by volunteers from the museum, from U3A, from Adult Learning Classes for adults with learning disabilities and from Claire's Creative Cabin.  These replicated the pincushions made by invalided soldiers, using some of the images from the main panels as the focal picture on each heart.  .

Some of these volunteer embroiderers also made exquisitely  stitched postcards on silk organza, (which is not an easy fabric to sew on). These were based on the hugely popular cards sent home by the troops from France and Belgium.

Thanks to Cary for drawing these up for us.

And of course I couldn't have done this whole project without the wonderful Gilly Vose, assistant curator at the Norris museum and great collaborator!

I know these pictures are a bit blurry - if you get the chance, come along and see it all for yourself!!!

It's all part of a bigger exhibition at the

Norris Museum

Memories of WW1 Textile

The WW1 exhibition is up at the Norris Museum in St Ives and will be open until the 28th of September.  As promised I have some more pictures of the show. Young people from the history and textiles departments of the Ivo school researched the war on a visit to the    Huntindonshire archives

We used images, letters. newspaper articles which they selected to create these 3 panels.

This one focusses on the stories about local men who went to war

This panel is the story of the VAD's (nurses), of the music that was played during the war, and features a local school's log book recording the news of the Armistice

This  panel is about the women and children at home, in and around St Ives and their role in the War Effort

So, each panel has  number of pictures which the young people and museum volunteers transferred onto fabric and embellished with stitch, applique, buttons and other ephemera

... like these of the Hunts cyclists

and this assemblage on Ivor Day, which includes a poem written by his brother on the event of Ivor's sad death in action.

Here is a lovely composition, found in a school book, written by the young girl pictured, describing how children can help in the war effort.

Many of the local women  became VAD's

I pre-dyed many of the fabrics using natural dyes to match the muted browns of the sepia photographs and to capture the sombre mood of the war.  We used touches of red as a highlight, here and there.

Scattered across the panels are verses of popular WW1 songs. The exhibition is part of a larger show on the music of the Great War.  The young people from St Ivo School did these little panels by exposing the texts to the sun using cyanotype fabric - another link with history.

I have even more from this exhibition - I'll show it in my next post......

World War One Textile

This is a little preview of a community art project I've been working on with the Norris Museum in St Ives. We will be putting up the exhibition tomorrow, and it opens to the public on Saturday.
Norris Exhibitions

This picture is just a little taster - there will be more.

 The project focuses on the home front, the roles of women and children and the parts played by local people in the First World War.

Individual embroideries by young people from the Ivo School and museum volunteers.

If you live locally,  I hope you'll  come and see these for yourself.  I think this is a very special exhibition.

Transform a Textile

Every year Barbara from  the MX Dyers list, very kindly sends out an "ugly' fabric that she has dyed. Her challenge is for  the person who recievesthis fabric to transform it in some way, using Procion dyes as part of the process.

This year I got a fabric which was more boring than ugly- A textured pale peach fabric and this is the story of what I did to it:

So, this is what I recieved.

First I hand painted it roughly with some dyes I had left over from other work, allowing the peach to modify the colours and show through in places.

Thinking it looked a bit like a rusty screen,  I screen printed on some 'graph paper' using textile paints to give it a screenlike texture

Next, I screen printed with some thickened dyes using a photoscreen I made some time ago from some marks I had made with charcoal.

And finally, I selected a motif from the larger screen and printed with a discharging agent to give some added illumination to th ein between spaces.

Detail of the final surface.

After an intense week of teaching summer school, it's really good to be challenged to do some work of my own,   - so thank you Barbara!

Cottenham Summer School 2014

Whew....another wonderful, creative, energetic week.  Here is a small sampling of the work made by the very talented and hard working summer school, "Sensational Screenprinters"

Sarah R   see fab fabs  for more of Sarah'a work

Amanda - removing colour with her own thermofax design

Betty - lovely tablecloth, being printed

David - designed for clever registration!

Jean J another exquisite textile print from Jean. See Flickr account below for some of her variations on this theme

Kate - fabulous winter trees.

Jean G, breaking all the rules!

Marian - her delicate grasses, layered

Sandra a true child of the 60's!

Alison, all the way from America!!

Sarah P - she really likes to print little creatures!

Ann- Look out for her cards of this print

 

 

 

 

See flickr account for more work made this week   flickr summer school  look under 'photostream' for work from this year and past years