Stitch & Post 2

This past weekend I taught my Stitch & Post workshop again.  This time it was through the Livestrong program at the Y.  Once again, I had a full class with eight people signed up.  But one person wasn't able to make it, so there were only seven.

The coordinator thought it would be better if we had the class for only two hours.  I said o.k. and tried to adjust what I did from the first workshop to hopefully speed things up.  I didn't show the participants the slides I had of other artists that use hand stitching in their artworks.  I did show them a few of the postcards that I had made with hand stitching so they would have some ideas.

During the first workshop, I demonstrated a stitch and then had the students practice it and also use it in several different ways.  Then I demonstrated another stitch and had everyone do that.  This time I demonstrated all the stitches at one time, had everyone start practicing their stitches and then I went to each table to demonstrate any stitch they wanted to see again and help anyone that needed it.  I didn't ask them to come up with different ways to use the stitching.

Then, I had them start composing their pieces (everyone decided to make a postcard size piece).  And the rest was the same as before.  They fused their compositions together, added accent stitching and then fused it to the stiff interfacing.

I told them that even though the class was scheduled for two hours, they were welcome to stay longer to keep working.  A few people did have to leave after the two hours and they took their pieces home to finish.  The rest stayed for another hour and one person was able to get completely finished and the others were close.

I like people to have a completed project when they leave because I know it might not get finished if they take it home.  I know this because I have done that myself.

Despite not finishing the project, I think most of them had a good time.  One person said she had never been able to do a french knot and now she did.

Here are Stephanie, Bea and Carol working on their compositions.

In the previous picture and the next, you will see some cut mats.  This was something I learned from my last workshop, that it would be helpful for people to see the finished size so they would know where to end their stitching.  So I cut a few mats they could lay on top to help visualize.

Work in progress.

This one, by Ginny, is really fun with the cat scuba diving.  This is still a work in progress and she took it home to do some more stitching.

I had a bunch of cats already cut out from a long time ago and a couple of people used them.  This is Carol's piece and the only one that got completed. She was the one that said she couldn't do the french knot previously and look at all the ones she put in the sky!

Overall, it went well.  I am thinking that, ideally, if I were to teach this again, that two classes of two hours would work best.  We could take our time in the first class looking at examples and practicing the stitching.  Then, the next class could be spent composing and accent stitching the actual piece.