For the past couple of weeks group members have been making baskets using willow. First tackling the base…
…then weaving between the uprights…
…and finally making the border…
Here are three of the finished baskets
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Catching the Memories and Passing on the Skills
Withy Arts’ new project, Catching the Memories and Passing on the Skills, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund, has just started. One of the aims of this year long project is to teach participants the skills of basket making which were so important to Great Yarmouth’s past. The fishing industry used baskets in great quantities until plastic took over and for this reason, Great Yarmouth was a place of skilled craftsmanship.
For the first few weeks participants have been learning the basics of weaving in both willow and cane and in the process, made some beautiful objects, pictured below.
Dragon Flies
Reed mace
And finally, cane work…
Pencil pot
Oval basket
Finishing Touches
We spent our time together this week finishing off our pieces and making decisions about how they are going to be displayed in the exhibition.
Sarah and Katie tagteam stitching.
Suzanne and Keara finishing their work.
Emily working
We tried the finished pieces against different coloured backgrounds to see what the effect was.More about the exhibition in the coming days!
Nearing completion
Several stitchers in the group and near to completing their pieces.
Lucy’s work has developed from her original plate…
She has added seaweed and pebbles to dramatic effect…
Here she is stitching
Katie has also been adding shells to her piece
…as has Emily
Creative Decisions
We’ve got to the point where we are all making creative decisions about how our coast-inspired pieces are going to look. Working on our separate canvasses whilst sharing the space is delightful.
Keara stitching
detail from her piece
Emily stitching
detail form her piece
Sewing Circle
We settled down to stitching on the sewing plates we made last week. We achieved that lovely state where we were stitching together in companionable silence.
Katie stitching…
…her work
Keara stitching…
…her work
We also made some new plates for future weeks which we left to dry on the shelf.
Making up our sewing plates
We used the prints and rubbings we made last time and other fabrics to create ‘plates’ for sewing onto in future sessions. We ripped the fabrics and arranged them how we liked them and stuck them down.
While they were drying we had a go at Free Stitching, Free Stitching means you can put your stitches anywhere you like, so you can make patterns if you want to, but you can also do something less fixed, even chaotic.
Katie stitching. She decided afterwards that these shapes looked like fish.
Lucy stitching.
Jackie stitched a picture of her house.
Keara stitched some stars.
Emily and her cross stitch.
Richard attempted chaos.
Suzanne stitched over and through her stitches.
