Day School - Recycle and Reform a Book Jacket, with Margaret Stanford

A freezing wintry day was cheered by the bright colours of the materials used in this day school.  Margaret Stanford makes beautiful book covers from recycled scraps of fabric, the sort we all have in our stash. She brought heaps of scraps for us to use. We all chose scraps in our favourite colour scheme, cut them into strips and arranged them on a piece of calico. We machined them down, then cut the fabric crossways into strips, and arranged them on another piece of calico, resulting in a pattern of random squares, which we machined down with meandering stitches.  Then the fun began with picking pieces of glitz and glitter to add in small scraps over the fabric. We then used some of our fancy stitches and threads to heavily cover the material in random paths of stitch, consolidating it into a whole piece of fabric.

After lunch Margaret showed us how to line and finish the book jacket, she had brought the precut pieces of liner and bondaweb, and we finally stitched it all together, meaning we could finish the day school with a completed piece of work! All the books were completely different, and looked like a jewel box of colour and texture.

We worked very hard, but it was a very satisfying and enjoyable day.

Margaret's Own Work and Demo Sample

First Stage - arranged the strips of fabric

Second stage - the cut strips rearranged for the base fabric, and trying out bits of 'bling'

Selection of the completed books

All the books - a jewelled 'patchwork'

Jewellery Design, talk by Sheila Roussel

Sheila is a multi talented lady who told us about her journey from being a busy crafty child always knitting and making things, through catering college and gaining a textile arts degree, to finding her metier in jewellery design, gaining a degree from Duncan of Jordanstone Art College in Jewellery Design. Sheila had brought her beautiful sketchbooks and ideas books showing the process of creating the intricate pieces she had brought with her.

She had combined textiles and silver in 'memory frames', many of them commissions to hold treasured photos with etched and engraved silver mottos with relevant sentiments. The raw materials for the designs were very interesting, silver wire and sheet, and a particularly lovely technique of dyeing or printing on aluminium sheet, which is then incorporated into the delicate silver pieces. Inspiration in the forms of dragonflies and butterflies flitted through the jewellery, along with casted silver honeybees, shells and coral.

Sheila had brought along some of her tools and a little anvil, and several ladies had a go at beating and engraving copper sheets, with hammers with special heads.

Sheila has exhibited at the Barbican in London, the Lighthouse in Glasgow and Centrespace, Dundee, along with Perth Open Studios and various other venues. She also teaches in Adult Education and runs various workshops, and we hope she will do a workshop for us - watch this space!

Sheila can be found at www.sheilaroussel.co.uk, and on Facebook Facebook.com/SheilaRousselJewelleryDesign

Nature inspired and aluminium sheet jewellery

Bangles, some with casted silver objects

Memory box and memory brooch

Dyes and printed aluminium sheets

Trying out engraving copper sheet