Last week the Grasby Embroiderers had a workshop with Wendy of Twigs and Sprigs. Wendy does lots of willow workshops and sculptures, but Helen had made a copper wire hare at a workshop with Wendy a while ago. Helen had thought it would push the group out of our comfort zone if we were to use wire instead of our usual threads.
We were going to make wrens using hard and soft copper wire. I had done some sculptures with wire before, for my Degree Show back in 2013, but nothing realistic (see the three photos below). I’d started fidddling with the wire from red wine bottles, and then progressed to copper wire from old electric cables, which was much finer wire than Wendy was using.
This is the start of wrapping in fleece.
The whole body of work was titled “Informed by the organic”, and this is one of the final pieces.
Back to the wrens! We started with a template that Wendy had provided (along with everything else we needed). It was very challenging, as proportions needed to be right for the wren to look realistic. It looked simple enough …
… but tricky to get just right. The coils were wound round a wooden spoon and it miracuously went from this ….
to this …
I’d become so engrossed with the work that I’d forgotten to take photos. The coils were used to fill in the body and head. Another piece of wire was bent to represent tail feathers; it was then anchored in position and more wire added to the body.
The next thing was to twist the feet and legs, and the trickiest part was to make the second one match the first! Each leg was pushed up into the body, and the remaining wire twisted to fix it in place. Much to my surprise it stood up with little adjustment to balance it.
That just left the wings to make and attach. This I found to be the most difficult bit: they need to be attached, but not so the wrapping round was visible; the wings need to appear as if they can be opened to fly away.
I’m really pleased with the result, and between us Grasby Embroiderers have a little flock of wrens.
debbidipity 