October Dayschool 'Journey in Stitch' by Janet Browne

The tables were set out ready for sewing machines and an optimistic air of industry as Janet explained her ‘Journey in Stitch’. She has a background in fine arts and after a papermaking course decided to complete a HNC with maps as her focus. 

She lives in the Yorkshire Dales and having walked the same routes on many occasions, interpreted these in black and white using textures, stitch and text. Eventually she added colour and stylised sheep, cars and houses among other things and still uses these ideas in her work today. 

She sketches little drawings on her routes now and uses photographs for important buildings. She utilises an interest in folk art too- important buildings are bigger than less important ones in her work.

Janet has moved her work forward from the large maps, which she still has commissions for, to smaller embroideries using birds, hares and plants.

After showing us her designs and embroideries she explained the task for the day. We had to draw a house, shed or beach hut with trees in the background and a foreground and colour it in. Her main tip was to keep it simple with stylised trees and shrubs.

Once this had been completed we traced the outline onto dressmakers’ tracing paper. Next we made a sandwich- the tracing paper (reversed so the design was the same as our original), a layer of wadding, a layer of calico and then scraps of fabric layered on top, one at a time, for the details of our design.

Starting with the background, then the foreground we stitched around the shapes from the back using the traced design to outline them. We used a machine embroidery foot if we had one and with the dog feed teeth down the fabric was easily manoeuvred.

Once the foreground and trees had been stitched the shed, house or beach hut was added. To create windows and doors two layers were used and once stitched the first layer was cut away to reveal the colour underneath. Now extras like plant pots, and shrubs were added.

Eventually the final finishes could be stitched like flowers and leaves, some shapes could be cut and padded from the back with kapok to give a 3D effect; and to finish the whole piece a second piece of calico is stitched on the back in cream thread following the outline of the whole design and then trimmed . With several of the shapes a whole street could be made.

Janet gave us all time to discuss future ideas and many of us took this opportunity. 


Yet more ideas for the September Exhibition 2014? I wonder.

Thanks to Janet who has obviously developed her techniques over the years to achieve such beautiful, intricate and fascinating pieces.

The girls in the back room .....

The annual competition for the Gertrude Goodenough trophy was awarded to Ann Reading for her canvas flower garden - 'Holehurd Gardens' near Ambleside.