Alston Hall Residential [The outcome was great]

Well several days have gone by since i last updated my blog and i have been feeling frustrated because i couldn't get a good enough signal to keep you up to date. I suspect the Pennine mountain range and the bad weather might have had something to do with it.

I finally made it home after a repeat wet journey of the Wednesday going up. I couldn't believe how much water was laying on the fields as i drove home from Alston Hall.


On Thursday I had a fab time teachinggold work. All ladies went home thrilled with what they had achieved, even ifit was only a piece the size of a postage stamp. Goldwork can’t be rushed andis terribly time consuming so even a small project can take weeks or even months.

Finished teaching at 4pm and clambered to my bed room where Icollapsed on the bed and did something I never do. I had a before dinner nap.

It doesn't look much when you have spent all day working at it does it.

I'm not leaving until I have finished this bit

On Friday after a lovely cookedbreakfast I taught stump work. We were making an Elizabethan sweet bag and asyou can imagine there wasn't much of that to show for a hard days sewingeither.

I had a couple of hours to myself at the end of the day and as thesun was shining I decided to get some fresh air and took the time to take somemore pics of the lovely building I was teaching in.

The chapel. Not in use now but very pretty

Taken from the Crochet lawn

Friday night at 8.15pmI started teaching again.This time I was teaching Machine embroidery with organza and the soldering ironand was looking forward to helping my ladies design and worktheir own designs instead of one of my designs. They were a great bunch andmost were willing to have a go and play Earlier in the day I had vacatedmy room of two days and moved to the garden room on the other side ofthe house. I didn't mind because this room was great and had everything inone place. Also because I had a larger number of students, it made senseand gave everyone a good amount of room to spread out and get comfortable. Andboy did they spread. There was organza and sewing equipment everywhere.

We had all met up for the first time at dinner that evening andthen went to work afterwards. We only did an hour of me explaining andinspiring so that we could get going straight away after breakfast onSaturday.  Everyone was generally worn out on the Friday eveningas they have had to travel, but you always get one or two who want to burn themidnight oil so I signed off at 9.30pm and headed for the bar for a nice glassof chilled wine followed by an early night to bed.

Saturday we got going while making friends and stitching. Demonstrations happenedthroughout the day and I got the job of trying to extract informationfrom each student to help them achieve a stunning piece of work across theweekend, which they all did. I could have brought every piece home with me butthey wouldn’t letthem go and tucked them away quickly so that I couldn’t pinch any

My ladies were all lovely and we all got on a treat. Ihope I bump into them again in the future.

They produced some great work all of which I could of run awaywith. Have a look and see!!!!

Paula's piece based on photos from a derelict church

I love the bronze through to blue and green appearing in this architechtural sample

A lovely sample of layered organza, stitched with straight lines and cut out with the soldering iron

Based on Andy Goldworthy's stone photos

Ghost tree based on Andy Goldworthy's photos

Soldering out the material to be removed from the background and sealing the edges