Drawing with Stitch Archives ⋆ Louise KirbyLouise Kirby

I spent a lovely morning in sunny St Andrews at the St Andrews Museum running a Drawing with Stitch workshop to go with the Botany Cultivating Collections exhibition. We had an inspiring wander round the gallery looking for shapes and images we would want to use in our own hand stitched drawstring bags. I was taken by an enlarged model of a pea in the pod. Here’s my wee sample below.

There was a lovely mix of images, painting and objects to choose from. Everyone was taken by something different for their design from seaweed, still life painting by Peploe, daisies to the table cloth in the activity room. We used a mix of stitches from running, daisy, chain and embellished with buttons or added applique in a relaxed atmosphere. Here are a few samples.

The exhibition finishes this Sunday 12th May so pop along if you can. This exhibition was set up by the Museum and Gallery Students from St Andrews University. The proceeds of the participants fees went to the St Andrews Botanical gardens and there’s a donation box in the gallery too.

I’m running a 4 week block of Drawing with Stitch for 11-16 year olds at the DCA. Where we will create cool tote bags. The course runs from the 25th April from 6pm – 8pm for 4 consecutive weeks. I’ve designed this to learn some basic hand sewing skills and also to encourage participants own creativity creating unique outcomes. Looking forward to meeting all the budding new designers and seeing their creative results. Block needs to be booked directly through the DCA box office and more info here.

Being a textiles and surface pattern designer I’m always using lots of ways of markmaking and stitch adds a lovely quality of line. I love decorating surfaces in images, patterns and words.

Here’s some some of my stitch samples below