Bluebell Wood
What a thoroughly wonderful time I had at Alison Holt’s freehand machine embroidery course last week. It was a splendid three days of learning new techniques – silk painting and machine embroidery – surrounded by other likeminded ladies. Alison’s tuition was informative, engaging and entertaining and she was always on hand to offer advice and help should one need it. Upon arriving at Alison’s beautiful studio in her back garden, I unpacked my many belongings, sharing a table with Gail and Liz. We immediately started nattering and didn’t really stop! The first demo was Alison showing us how to transfer a design onto the silk in readiness for painting. After carefully selecting a suitable picture to copy, I set about tracing the bare bones of the image and then using that tracing to transfer the design to my silk. The lines are defined using gutta, which is a resist and forms a physical barrier to stop the silk paints running into each other. ...