Residential Embroidery Courses at

St. Andrews, Fife. June and July 2011

Our classes for summer 2011 are varied and exciting! There is something for everyone, whether you are a beginner or more experienced; whether you want to become at ease with your sewing machine or to recycle your fabric stash.

During the week you will have time off to explore the beautiful, historic city of St.Andrews and enjoy a refreshing walk along the beach. Your en suite accommodation will be in the three star university residence, New Hall, with tea and coffee making facilities and tv. in your room.

It’s all in the Stars

13 – 17 June 2011

tutor Yvonne Weir

Explore Traditional hand-stitch techniques using Zodiac Imagery

This is your chance to explore a variety of traditional techniques, e.g. freestyle, pulled thread, black-work, Hardanger, metal thread. You will be encouraged to move out of your comfort zone and try something new. Simple techniques will be used to create designs from Zodiac related source material which could include symbols, flowers, animals, lettering, tattoos etc. After working experimental samples you will be ready to move on to a project, which could be a small hanging, a bag, a box or a book-cover.Booking

Tutti Frutti

20 – 24 June 2011

tutor Maureen Shepherd

A workshop to take the mystery out of basic design techniques for embroidery

Starting with the glorious resource of the fruit basket, students will use a variety of art materials to record details of colour, shape, line and texture. Fun with mixed-media will follow, together with dyeing and painting fabric and threads needed for stitch. Hand and/or machine stitching will be used in a variety of ways to capture the essence of the paper experiments in textile. Finally there will be time to discuss how these samples will lead to a finished piece.
(NB All fabrics, threads and dyes required will be provided for a fee of £10.00).Booking

Bags of Fun with your Sewing Machine

20 – 22 June 2011

Short Course

tutor Toni Hanley

This is your chance to make your machine your ‘best friend’. You will become familiar with ‘free machining’, and will try out feather, whip and cable stitch and discover how creative you can be. The resulting samples can be made into a variety of bags, which can be embellished with cords, tassels, and beads. Take your inspiration from Eastern motifs, architecture and even floral designs. Play-group style activities will produce coloured and patterned fabric to use in your machining.Booking

Canvas – A Fabulous Fabric

4 - 8 July 2011

tutor Jeanette Illingworth

Canvas is a fabric with a fantastic range of applications. It can be coloured, cut away, used as a base for appliqué, manipulated and, of course, stitched into. With a multitude of stitches to try you can use an equally varied collection of threads, from fine silks or metallics to chunky wools and strips of fabric or cord. Your work can be three dimensional, or free-standing with the canvas as a fray-free fabric. Once stitched it can be embellished with beads, buttons or other found objects and used for a variety of pieces such as bags, panels, book-covers or box-lids.