Master Class with Alice Kettle

I’ve just got back from a one day master class with the textile artist Alice Kettle. I met eight of the other finalists for the Charles Henry Foyle Trust award. It was an interesting day. The most enjoyable part for me was to meet up with other textile artists. We came from many different areas of the textile art world and all had very different styles. We spent quite a long time introducing ourselves at the beginning and having a show and tell of pieces of our work. Afterwards we did some collage work exploring aspects of line.

After lunch and an interesting short presentation of her own work by Alice, we moved onto to exploring line using sewing machines. We each had a Pfaff machine to use courtesy of VSM UK who also provided the rooms where the workshop was held. In no time at all the day was over. I couldn’t believe my ears when Alice said there were only twenty minutes left. Sad that it all whizzed by in a flash but it was fun to meet the others and I left feeling that we weren’t really competitors but all people on the same journey of discovery towards expressing our creativity as textile art. Whoever receives the award in September will deserve it.

Here are a couple of photos taken in the afternoon. This is Alice at the machine demonstrating various ways of making line and mark with the sewing machines.

Here are Carla and Charlotte hard at work.

And here is a small selection of our finished work from the day.