Thursday 23 August 2012

Textured Textiles




Elisabeth Hennessey came along to The Kings Lynn Embroiderers Guild to give us a Saturday workshop on Textured Textiles. She spoke to us about her work and around the room there were different activities to do with looking at how we create textiles and the making of. Her work has a lot of surface decoration and she specialises in stitch. We had so much fun rubbing, painting, sharing thread and textures. Our sketchbooks were brimming over with ideas.
See more about our Embroiderers Guild Branch HERE

Quilt Making Classes


Quilt making Thursday is the last Thursday of every month at Knitwits. It is always full of lots of creative activity with quilts being designed and ones well on their way to be completed as you can see by the photographs above. Claire works at Knitwits and on her day off often comes along to class to move her projects onto the next stage. Here, she is making a double quilt using Japanese Style fabrics that you can buy from Knitwits. They have a vast selection and vary in price too! Remember there is are classes every Thursday with different inspiration each week and month.
See the classes that are available from September HERE

Norwich Maddermarket Theatre Costumes






Amanda, the costume mistress and designer from the Norwich Maddermarket Theatre came along to The Kings Lynn Embroiderers Guild to show us some of the costumes, tell us some of the stories behind them and how she puts together costumes for the show.  As you can see by the photographs, Amanda dressed a model and acted in some of the costumes to bring them alive. The theatre puts on around 12 plays a year and Amanda has £200 to spend on costumes for each show, so there is a lot of recycling going on. There are over 50,000 pieces of costume in the theatres storeroom and many are recycled over and over again in different ways to fit a show. Many of the costumes and accessories are vintage and original for the era, Edwardian, Victorian, 1940 dresses for example and all their extras. The oldest piece of accessory they have, is a 1730 Dorset Button, which Amanda passed around the audience for us to look at. It was a miniature button and had exquisite stitches. Amanda was wearing a beautiful Victorian style brooch which several of us admired and she told us it was from a friend who makes jewellery. See the website HERE 
Thank you Amanda for such a wonderful evening.
Visit the Maddermarket Theatre HERE