ON THE FIFTH DAY

There was lunch with an 'old' friend in the Mews cafe, where steak was the yummy of the day.  It is also a fantastic day for my family with the birth of the first Franklin to carry on our branch of the name.  So its a huge welcome to Demi, I wish him to be blessed with health, wealth & happiness & congratulations to my nephew & his wife, also my borther & sister-in-law, we are all so very delighted x

I have just returned from the exhibition where I met one of SMASHEE girls - Liz Gordon, who was sporting a fabulous bag she had made with the front pocket being Phoenix from the workshops, lovely to meet you Liz, thank you so much for coming, we all appreciate it greatly, I hope that you got lots & lots of ideas for stitch
Today's eye candy is mixed, starting with this outstanding piece on watersoluble fabric, this student has made a really difficult technique into her own, by completing not one 3D piece but many

How she managed to get such intricate stitching to lay so flat, well it is a complete mastery of this technique, look at the fabulous lace along the edges

If you live near then please come & view this & the other beautiful pieces

A beautiful vibrant box, made with stitched silk, dificult to work with, with so many pieces.  This etui has a box underneath, pockets & a lovely heart pin cushion & is for this students grand-daughter.  The purple on the open flap is all machining, I would love this in my bedroom for jewellery.

You need a high degree of skill to tackle an item such as making a shoe.  Stitching on silk with quite a basic machine, ALL of the item above was constructed by this student, the execution was superb.  This is truely an outstanding piece of created stitched textile

This working clock shows skill with the Smashing machine & uses a subject close to my heart of Tintern Abbey, what a clever presentation

This student has considerable dressmaking, tailoring & digitizing skills.  This waitcoat was made on faux suede, quite a difficult fabric to hoop for the digitized design which was based on her colour work!  The use of a sun style punch to punch out shapes to display colour work was so effectively desplayed that it inspired a waistcoat!  That is the value of design based courses, you never know what will 'grab' your imagination

Well I had better do some work now, before all my creative juices are depleated; please return tomorrow for another helping, thanks for looking x