Cas Holmes Workshop

Cas Holmes Workshop - 22nd July 2017

Momigami, Stitch, Paper and Cloth

We all arrived to the Cas Holmes workshop uncertain what we were going to be asked to do.  The list of  materials we would need gave us no clues.  We wandered around the hall peering at each others materials and looking eagerly at the examples Cas had brought along with her trying to work out what we were going to do.

The workshop was to be an introduction to some of the artist's personal approaches to creating mixed media work with found materials and bring our own interpretation to it.

                       

Some examples of Cas's work.

Cas starting off the workshop.


First, Cas demonstrated how to distress the  scrap paper - wrapping paper, magazine pages, brown paper we had brought along - by crumpling them up and rubbing and rolling them in her hand until she had created textile papers (Momigami).  She explained how the different fibre lengths mean the crumpled paper reacts in slightly different ways and gives different effects.

She then sent us all off to choose five pieces of paper and to start distress them by crumpling over and over again.  Slightly baby oiled hands helped!  We all set off with slightly puzzled looks.  What would we be doing with this paper?

It was good to see Barbara again.

After giving us some time to try the different types of paper we had chosen, Cas then drew us together again to show us the next stage of preparing our paper. 

The next stage of preparing our crumpled paper, which now begins to feel more like fabric, was to colour wash it using our own choice of paint, dye, water soluble crayon, chalk pastels, wax crayons.

Using our drawing media to transform the paper.

Learning how to build up and layer our work, using the mark making to lead us.

Using our A5 piece of calico as a base, we chose our paper and any other found objects we brought with us.  We laid out a mixture of paper and cloth, re arranging our work until we were pleased with the effect.  Then we either pinned or glued our pieces to the backing to fix their position.

Finally, we were able to get our thread out and begin to use stitches to embellish our work. At this point a calm seemed to settle on the room as we felt in our comfort zone.   First of all we were restricted to a running stitch, but encouraged to think how we could vary its effect on our work by changing length and direc.  Just when we were feeling on steady ground, Cas asked us to stitch from the wrong side of the work!


Here are our examples of work.  We were quite impressed with the range of ideas people came up with, although they are not finished yet.  We look forward to sharing them with you at our Quilt Show in 2018.

We all found this a challenging but a worthwhile workshop and some of us have been enthused enough to follow up with another workshop with Cas Holmes at West Dean near Chichester.

Sandown 2017

Another year and another great day out for the group.  This year we visited Sandown on the Sunday and found it a lot quieter which made for stressless shopping.
The quilt exhibition was a great mix of traditional and modern quilts.

Perhaps an idea of how to use my peppered cottons?

There were some excellent examples of whole cloth quilting.

An idea for all those scraps you can't throw away.

Some of the details.

More detail of all the tiny appliqued blocks.

Love the use of colour in this quilt.

A quilt of blocks - amazing variety.

A mixture of applique and pieced blocks.