Siân Martin

Siân Martin started DISTANT STITCH in 1991.  Distant Stitch offers online tutoring where you can learn how to achieve skills in design and embroidery. Siân  has devised two courses – an Embroidery Certificate and a follow-on Embroidery Diploma. Each Course is written by the tutor in a series of six clear and well-illustrated Modular stages to enable you to enjoy your adventure of discovery and achievement. You will given individual and regular feedback in a friendly, supportive and professional manner.

Students  study their Courses entirely online by downloading their Modules from the website and showing their work via a personal ‘blog’. So, wherever you live, you can become a student and discover the details of these Courses. For details of these Courses  www.distantstitch.co.uk.

A free Embroidery ‘Taster’ is offered to discover the joys of learning in your own home, to your own timetable.

3 June 2011 ::: posted by Sian Martin in courses

TURNING TO THE BOTTLE

This is a fun workshop which will focus on the use of wire and stitch.

The design source will be bottles because they form such great shapes that can easily be formed in wire. We will add character by wrapping, dipping, stitching and painting. The aim will be a free-standing textile still life!’

REMOVE AND REPLACE

A fresh look at Drawn Thread Work

Vessel in coloured linen scrim with stitch

Add colour!

Pull threads to rearrange the colour pattern to make interesting colour mixtures and a loopy surface.

Draw out threads from the weave and replace them back into the fabric in different patterns.

Withdraw threads and replace with interesting yarns, ribbons

Make 2D and 3D shapes.

BY ACCIDENT OR DESIGN?

This workshop will encourage you to be surprised and to take risks by responding to fresh ideas. You can relax and allow yourself to follow your intuition and focus on the materials in your hands, rather than on a prescribed theme or a visual starting point.

You will explore different ways of being creative to refresh your ways of working. This may involve trying new methods such as working backwards and up-side-down. You will be able to develop your curiosity and sense of fun in exercises with papers, fabrics and stitch by starting from a different view point.

ASSEMBLAGE

Create a flowing textile from your stack of old greetings cards, photos and postcards or tiny fragments of abandoned stitched samples and discarded fabrics and even drawings and papers.

• Your sewing machine will link these into a mosaic curtain to celebrate the contents of the fragments perhaps.

::: posted by Sian Martin in courses