Beryl Taylor Workshop

When I saw that Beryl Taylor was scheduled to run four workshops in the UK starting on the May Bank Holiday weekend, I immediately signed up for two of them.  And was very glad I did.

Beryl's skills and vision in mixed media work are inspiring.  Her book, Mixed Media Explorations, is one of my favourites, especially the sections on paper cloth.  The colours of the pieces featured in the book are gorgeous and even better in real life - she brought many for us to look at for inspiration.

The workshop showed us how to make a Tree of Life book.  This consisted of printing, painting, stitching and embellishing fabric pages that are then stitched into a book form.  The techniques included use of moulding paste, stencilling, monoprinting,  block printing, beading and simple embroidery.

These are the pages of my book prior to stitching them together:

And the finished book:

 
But... I'm not certain it will ever be truly finished.  I am so enjoying the hand stitching that I want to keep going and am, at last, making inroads, albeit slight, into my stash of beads and embroidery threads.  I would like the book to be rich in texture, stitch and embellishment, with surprises on each page.  So, it will be an ongoing project for some time yet.

However... I also have in mind another textile book, one that will take me out of my colour comfort zone. 

I tend to work in a warm palette, as you will have seen in this website.  A challenge to myself is to make a book in cool colours - blues, greys, whites, silver, with a contrast for interest, one I have yet to choose.  I might limit the images to a single block and see in how many ways it can be interpreted and embellished; or a theme, maybe paisley or leaves.  The ideas are still germinating and I will post whan I have made some progress!