Thank you to everyone who asked me to continue my weekly blog. Sorry it has taken so long, much longer than I anticipated to sign up to a plan.

As I said in my last post I have always seen September as a time of new beginnings, and I have certainly started several projects since I last wrote, including one today at Seata.

The day started with a fascinating and inspiring talk by Elnaz Yazdani (great business card!), the title Rethinking Embroidery. I made notes, and wrote down projects and groups that Elnaz has been involved with to look at later. She uses traditional techniques using found and repurposed materials (including paper fasteners as beads – long coveted since seeing them as a child on “Blue Peter”). She has an incredibile amount of energy and enthusasism. She’s involved with and teaches a huge range of people about stitching, from 3 and 4 year olds upwards. She also showed many of her real pieces and samples during the talk and slideshow, and when showing us techniques this afternoon in the Creative metal threads workshop.

The break after the talk was very short as we were all keen to start stitching. We had the choice of buying a kit or bringing a requirements list from our own stash. I opted to use my stash, starting with a piece of dark brown velvet that I picked up on the sales table at the autumn regional meeting last week.

Once it was tightly in a hoop, we were to draw “islands and roads” on tracing paper to fit the size of the hoop, before cutting out the “islands” in felt. This is where I went off-piste: too impatient to plan, I just cut the felt freehand, and then stab-stitched it down.

Well, I managed two before Elnaz showed us how to couch down tubing (kits) or soutache on mine, then from my goldwork box some gold braid, which has horrible frayed ends that are going to be tucked under an island to hide them. I did consider plunging them, but didn’t want to make such a large hole in the velvet. I was pleased that I had been too keen to progress with some of the other techniques, so I’ll not need to unpick to hide the ends. The couching thread shredded as I tried to separate the strands, hence the twisted threads attached near the middle.

We then cut purl purl into beads, and attached them with a short gap so they made little curls on one of the “islands”. And bottom left, another knot of thread with the ends left sticking up! I’m hoping I’ve got enough of the gold purl purl to finish the island.

This is where I ‘d got to by the end of the afternoon. Nobody seemed to want to stop stitching, and I certainly could have continued. Elnaz showed us lots more techniques to try, so watch this space.

I’m certainly going to have a longer look at her website elnazyazdani.com