Creating a Mixed Media Collage with a Group

So a while back a friend of mine, who works for the wonderful charity Art Space asked me if I would run some sessions that Art Space hold for adults with early onset dementia. The sessions are part of the MindSCAPE Project, which is an exciting 4 year Big Lottery funded project for the Forest of Dean.

The project is designed for people living with dementia, their families and carers, and has been developed to enable people to reconnect back to the landscape, through a regular series of meetings and workshops at Bracelands Adventure Centre, near Coleford and throughout the Forest of Dean.

I decided that we would, as a group make a large wall hanging, using mixed media (paper, felt, cotton & inks) and a variety of applique methods - stamping, gluing and stitching.

The sessions I ran were held over 6 weeks (one class every other Tuesday) and as the theme was nature, I chose to get the group making a large flower.

This was one of my example pieces:

Each person (or pair if more assistance was needed) had a petal template (which were likened to hot air balloon shapes, so watch out for that next time!) and a host of smaller nature inspired templates that I'd drawn for them. They then got creative!

In the first session, most people spend their time going through the materials and papers, choosing colours and patterns that they liked, cutting out their petal and their smaller images and starting to glue them in place:

Then the middle and last weeks, at their own pace, each person, or couple, got onto the fun part of making their petal really stand out. We had some special ink stampers, some googly eyes and 3D bug stickers, lots of stitching, especially by the men who'd mostly not done any sewing before.

A couple of the chaps didn't have the fine motor skills needed for working with the patterned fabrics and chose to do some stamping instead to decorate their petals. With some help they both achieved some wonderfully creative work:

Ultimately the whole group did such amazing petals and when they were all put together, they looked fantastic!

We had more petals than I originally expected, but it didn't matter, they all worked so well together. I'm over the moon for the group at how great it looks.

I took it home and stitched down the petals that had so far just been glued down. I also wanted to add a date to the piece, so I made a yellow centre for the flower and stitched 'MINDSCAPE 2016' on it. To give it a bit of a 3D element I also stuffed the center. The last thing to do was to add a dowel rod at the top so it can be hung up in it's new home at ArtSpace.

The group all said they'd really enjoyed the sessions and as if to prove it, they've invited me back to run some wet felting sessions next Spring! I can't wait!

Teaching Pre-School Sewing

Just a quickie today as I'm putting together a Christmas in July Tutorial (I know - seems FAAAAAAR too early to think about Christmas!!)

But last week and the week before I went into my son's nursery class to teach them some sewing - they LOVED making their creations. (You may remember that I did this last year with my daughter when she was in the pre-school class)

The first week was quite simple, they just sewed a heart onto a background using a simple running stitch:

I then added their names, using a sharper needle as I'd had to punch holes in the felt for the kids to sew using plastic needles.

The the following week they made piggie finger puppets, which they LOVED doing and according to all the Mums & Dads, they were incredibly proud of their puppets, which made my heart sing!

Patrick's Girlfriend :-)

Just like his Mummy, Sewing & Chatting!!

Can't caption the two pics above, but they are Patrick's best friend and his girlfriend!! It's SO cute how much these 4 love each other!

Anyway, I digress.... for the pig finger puppets, I made up the faces & ears and punch the holes in the puppets and then the kids sewed them up, using plastic needles again and with a whip stitch (mostly!!)

What's also really fantastic is that the nursery owners have asked me to go back next year, when I won't have any children at the nursery! Will be so nice as this age are SO excited to be doing new things and show such joy when they do it well!

Now.... for me, back to Christmas decorations!!

UK Handmade Interview & a Day at Pre-School

I forgot to mention a couple of weeks ago that I had been interviewed by the lovely and ever-so patient Kirsten Miller of UK Handmade for their Road Less Traveled series. I was a little bit nervous as it's the first proper interview I've done since starting Grace's Favours but it wasn't scary and the end result is something I'm really really pleased with and as soon as I can work out how to I'll be adding a "Press" section to the website!

to see the rest of the pics (and read the words!) click here

The other thing I wanted to share this week was the session I did at my daughter, Seren's, Pre-School class. Her teacher (who knows what I do for a living) asked if I would be interested in going into the nursery for a day to teach the Pre-School children how to sew! I was delighted to be asked and decided that I would get them doing a basic sampler like this:

Flower sampler

So I cut out a square of material for each child and machine stitched round the edges so it didn't fray once they started sewing. Then I drew the flower in 4 different colours (green stalk & leaves, orange centre, red for one set of petals and purple for the other set of petals)

I'd ordered a batch of large plastic needles and some embroidery threads in different colours and armed with all of this I set off for nursery on Tuesday morning.

Seren was beside herself with excitement and all her friends (actually, thankfully only 6 of them and 2 staff members!) were really enthusiastic about their "lesson"

Here are some pics from the day:

Great concentration from the boys - surprisingly!

Seren (in the heart dress) very keen to get every stitch right!

Mary: Are you sure I'm showing him right???

Sue: I'm sure I can do this!

One of the best results!

Stopped for lunch and a play, great progress!

They all worked SO hard, I was really proud of all the children! We didn't quite finish our projects in the day (interspersed with playing, running round outside and many pit stops for food and drinks!) so I'm going back in a fortnight's time to help them finish off.

I really really enjoyed my day with the kids, but my god, was I exhausted at the end of it!! I have a newfound respect for Nursery Staff!

Now pootling over to Handmade Monday now for a mooch round to see what everyone else has been up to this week!