Vintage hand embroidery and dyed threads with Anne Brooke
What better way to start the meteorological summer than with a session putting together fabric and threads with Anne Brooke, who, as always, was chatty, friendly, supportive and generous with her stash.
Anne brought lots of her completed pieces, as well as fabrics, haberdashery, print blocks and 'messy' resources.
We started the morning by learning how to colour threads in an easy, minimally-messy way using Koh-i-noor dye-based watercolours. After a quick demo from Anne, we were soon mixing colour (and tea, intentionally or otherwise!) in pre-prepared trays, taking inspiration from some of the fabrics Anne had brought with her. Such an easy technique, but with great results. Colouring may have been easy, ensuring the threads remained tangle-free when getting them ready for drying was a little more problematic for some of us!
After a quick lunch and another demo, we dived into Anne's stash, combining pieces with some of those that we'd brought from home.
Towards the end of the session, Anne provided more hints on adding fastenings and lettering to our pieces. We didn't quite reach that stage, but we all finished with pieces we were happy to continue working on at home.
Many thanks to Anne, who posts regularly on Instagram and YouTube - look for Anne Brooke Textile Artist and hannemade by anne.
