At 10 o'clock on Saturday 12th December 15 of us gathered in a local church hall for a day's tuition with Pauline Verrinder. We were all intrigued by the title of her course and wondered what she had in store for us.She started by explaining her work and inviting us to browse through several of her work examples and design/sketch books. Amongst other things she organises "Texiles in Focus" - an exciting 3 day textile event at Cottenham Village College in February. (For further information visit the website http://www.textilesinfocus.com/).
She also had numerous examples of the bobbles, buttons and brooches we were to spend the day making.
First she introduced us to the basic bobble. These were made by winding a thin strip of felt as you would wind wool. This was then fixed by wrapping and stab stitching to hold the wraps with a contrasting thread. Pauline encouraged us to leave some of the felt showing through to give contrast and interest. After we had made about three bobbles we moved on to make buttons.
For these she invited us to choose a piece of forming felt which she had dyed. We cut 4 circles of felt for the front, back and padding for the button. The front we embellished in a variety of ways. Some cut circles out of the centre either to expose the padding or to insert a contrast: a sheer or a shim. Then we used beads and thread to decorate by stitching or wrapping. A shank/loop was added to the back circle and then the four layers were joined using buttonhole or blanket stitch.
The same method could be used to make a brooch with the size and or the shape changed. Pauline did say we could add a brooch pin but she favoured using a pair of magnets, one inserted into the brooch and its pair placed behind the garment it was to decorate. (The magnets she had with her were rather weak and I doubted if they would hold a brooch securely but the idea is good since it means that there would be no danger of snags and pulls which you might get with a pin - it just needs stronger magnets.) Some people added their bobbles to their brooch hanging them from the edge or elsewhere.
A flower brooch was a design Pauline suggested and again this was made from the forming felt. Two layers of a poppy style flower were cut. The bobbles were mounted to make the flower centre and the layers joined as before with buttonhole stitch.
Next we made toggles from small hanks of thread wrapped with a contrasting thread to the required length. A loop/shank was added and the ends trimmed either long or short to personal preference. These could either be used singly or several mounted on a button/brooch.
We finished by wrapping cotton covered wire with thread to make small cage like balls. Some people let their imaginations loose and came up with several interesting designs. Pauline told us that she enjoyed this wrapping technique and was making a life size figure with it. She had an interesting 3d form which we were suprised to learn was a wrapped pill pot which she had cut into a contiuous spiral before she started.
At 4 o'clock we were very sorry to have to stop. We had had a challenging and satisfying day. We had all learnt a lot which we determined to take forward into our future work and had enjoyed ourselves enormously.
