Last Saturday at Linconshire Textiles we had a talk by Amanda J. Clayton, called “My Blue Suitcase”. Her work is beautiful and her talk was thought-provoking and inspiring. I’m pleased I made notes, not only so that I can reread them at my leisure, but also to answer to and for myself some of the questions she posed. She has previously been accused of name-dropping, but again I found this interesting and useful, some familiar names, but many new ones to look up and research for myself.

I hadn’t signed up for the workshop on the Sunday, but after such an inspiring talk I wanted to do it. Fortunately, there were spaces left, so Elaine and I decided we would go. All we needed to do was to gather together the items on the requirements list.

The fabrics above are some of the neutral coloured fabrics I hauled from my stash, also various threads (didn’t use any of my own) and a favourite leaf, as had been suggested.

I’d found these old pressed acer leaves.

The largest, reddest acer is the one that I decided to use……

and “another” (no idea what it is) found a week or so ago, and put on one side for safe keeping. They have wonderful textures.

We worked on a strip of silk organza, so lovely to stitch into that I bought two more at the end of the day!

We traced or drew the leaf on to the organza with a blue water soluble pen, and did a running stitch outline. Amanda had very generously brought 15(?) threads for us to use and try out. I started with silk floss, something I usually avoid as my hands are too dry and rough. (Amanda’s quick tip of wetting the length of thread slightly made a huge difference.)

The next one I tried was silk organzine. I think this is the nicest thread I have ever used, and will treat myself to some. Here’s just another outline.

I used it again for the next leaf, an outline and added veins.

The next one, I tried a different silk floss, an outline then filling in the leaf shape with more running stitches following the outline shape. The transparent cloth means it can be viewed from both sides, so the ends of the thread need to be considered. Knots or not?

It was at this point that I decided I liked the faint blue outline, as did Norma who was sitting next to me. After discussion with Amanda, I may whip the stitches with a very fine pale blue metallic thread that I have.

Amanda then demonstrated looking at negative spaces and filling them in, and applique, cutting out several leaves togther. We could buy a pack of tiny squares of a range of things that she uses. They looked too beautiful to use! But also they are in the order of the list, many that I don’t know and I want to be able to take my time with and label for future reference.

I layered up a selection of the things from my stash and started paying with them, overlapping and moving them around. I’ve not finished this section yet.

This is where it had got to at almost the end of the day.

But before we finished Amanda wanted to show us trailing stitch, sometimes known as couching – satin (Mary Thomas Dictionary of Stitches).

Once it’s finished it can be cut out – I haven’t got to that scary stage yet.

It was a great stitching day. Amanda was a very good tutor, and very generous with her threads, knowledge and ideas. We came away with good instructions, more hints and tips to be able to continue with the piece and develop our own ideas. It certainly fired up both Elaine and me, and we bounced ideas off each other all the way home. Amanda’s website is well worth a look: Amanda J. Clayton.