Sue Leonard Magic Metals Workshop

Thought I had better write a post as my blog is getting sadly neglected at the moment.

On Saturday I went to a workshop with the Embroiderers Guild in Norwich on metals with Sue Leonard who does lovely work and at the end of the day I realised my experiments were rubbish. We worked on copper and brass shim and copper and brass mesh.

The first thing we did was colour them by holding over a candle and this gave a great effect. This was to help any chemical agents we used to take better.

I only used lemon juice and balsamic vinegar but you can also use other agents such as wine vinegar and bleach. Then leave them for at least 24 hours.

This is lemon juice.

and Balsamic Vinegar

I think that the solid metal takes the effects better than the mesh which looks great just coloured with the candle.

We also coloured some lace paper which Sue layers with the metals and they look great placed over the shim.

I embossed some metal which looked quite effective

Some crimped examples which are useful for bits you make a mess of.

You can use a stamp to cut out shapes and use both the bits with holes in and the cut out bits in your work.

No idea what I'll do with the samples yet and will have to order some more shim to practice and do some stitching onto. I've also put in a request for a book The Art of Stitching on Metal by Ann Parr for Christmas which will hopefully give me some more ideas as metal can be very effective when combined with fabrics and stitch.

I've also just had a delivery of some shiny fabrics which I'll put in my next post so I can see me going sparkly next year.

Four more craft fairs before Christmas then a few months off to design and rethink new ideas.