All Things Urchfont

I seem to have been spending most of my time at Urchfont college in the last few weeks. as many of you will know it's a great place to spend time. The accommodation is good, the staff are lovely and the food is much too good. I used to teach there but now I'm enjoying just being a member of a group that meets there three times a year. More on that later.

It was Open Day last Sunday and all the groups that meet there had a stand to display their work. This is our group text.tiles 21. Our theme was green (there was a group groan when we heard that but we rose to the occasion) and the colour unification did help with the display.

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Don't you just love Jane Wild's Goddess with Drum? Not a great photo as it doesn't capture her voluptuousness (is that a word?) Detail below.
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Tutors from the classes that Urchfont run were all there, too. Sian Martin's Distant Stitch was there for a Summer School and had a wonderful slide show running. Hazel Credland showed some lovely work (below) and Lynn Horniblow was immediately signed up for a Workshop on the Web article on her super machine embroidered tassels. Just right for December
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We also have Lizzie Lane in that issue. You can see a detail of her piece on the lost art of handwriting below. Lizzie is a member of MEG - the machine embroidery group at Urchfont.

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When our group meet, three times a year, we try to have a theme for each meeting, as well as doing our own work. This time it was using stiffening products to make 3D shapes so I had a bash at a Moroccan lampshade to go with my hall lanterns. the ones I saw in Marrakesh (why didn't I buy one?) were made of skin but mine is the veggie version. I used Abaca tisssue with silk paper and used PVA glue as the stiffener.
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It was stamped with a Moroccan style pattern, thanks to a super new stamp from Ario, and it looked quite authentic. In the pic below I am stitching wrapped wire to strengthen the edges and enable a bit of shaping.
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The plan to is to use it with an Indian lamp - a relic of Clive's Indian childhood. It's made from a polished coconut with brass inlay and Eastern style feet. This always lived in the garage in the last house until Clive wanted to sling it out and I had a proper look at it and decided to promote it to the house. I shall attach it to a proper shade to keep it away from the light bulb. Hope to post up the finished piece soon.

Anyway it was a lovely couple of days and I'm now home, with thousands of jobs to do, most of them boring.

Comments

Thanks Heather.

Clare - your piece was lovely and it was such a lovely day. We did enjoy it and it sure was hard doing the judging, Alex.

Thank you for all the advice on PV panels, Gill - both here and in a series of emails. I think we are going ahead as this is our last house, I hope. We have also decided to have a woodburning stove. We weren't going to, as we don't have a chimney, but I have found a very modish one that looks like a large, shiny, black baked beans can and the stove pipe goes up through the roof. The last woodburner we had cut our gas bill in half so we hope it will be the same here.

I'm off to finish the lampshade now. Back soon.