The workshop we had last Saturday at S.E.A.T.A. (Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association) with Alex Hall flew by. Alex’s intention was for us to use different ways to attach found objects (like plastic rings) to fabric using a variety of stitched techniques.

I had already decided before I arrived that I was going off piste. I had some limpet shells that were almost rings that I wanted as my starting-point. This also influenced my choice of background fabric and my scraps, with a lovely piece of indigo batik / tie-dye that was just about the right size for a front and back. While looking for more limpet shells I found a plastic box full of seasidey bits and pieces gathered for a workshop with Nicky Dillerstone years ago: tea-dyed towelling and calico, blue velvet, a scrap of print in blue and cream spirals, textured synthetic (heat gun?), a strip of painted calico (sea and beach?).

With a little ripping and cutting, moving things around and assessing balance, I was ready to start anchoring down. The left hand side looks like sea and the right more beachy.

Looking through a jar of beads I found a little fish, which I thought was a bit twee, but then found several more. They are really tiny, kept in a spice jar lid. One has got away already.And there were exactly nine mixed in with beads and sequins etc.

Then I found this bit of net, and thought they could be caught in the net, with one or two escapees.

The shells below are ones I started painting at my painting class earlier in the week. Alex had informed me that the wonderful textures on the largest shell and the left foreground one, are “Pomatoceros” (what a lovely word!) – a tube-building annelid worm.

The central limpet shell was quite smooth, so I decided to add some “Pomatoceros” texture with bullion knots in the “Bella Donna” viscose thread that I’d vowed not to use again a few weeks ago!

At the moment they are wriggling all over the place and need anchoring to the shell with some matching sylko, but are giving the effect I’m aiming for. Even for bullion knots it’s horrible to work with, but it does slide on itself quite well.

Not much has been stitched down yet, and it will no doubt evolve from here as other things jump out at me, like using a limpet shell over the printed fabric to see the mollusc inside! One of the new members very kindly gave me the two silvery spirals, from a recycled piece of jewellery she’d found in a charity shop. Much to my shame, I can’t remember her name (sorry!), but I think she got my travelling book piece from last week.

I’m looking forward to getting back to it, once I’m up to date with the other things that have deadlines.