CQ Summer School: Image Transfer at Hillscourt, Birmingham

A lovely weekend in excellent company at Contemporary Quilt's Summer School  held at Hillscourt  Conference Centre near Birmingham. The first thing I saw was all these delightful orange Hieraceum's, 'Fox and Cubs' . There was also some interesting woodlands and grasslands - I spent a peaceful half hour on Sunday sketching this holly hedge and oak tree   before breakfast.

We were here to work tho'! I was doing Annette Morgans' Image Transfer class ( I'd originally booked to retreat but I  would have been 'Billy no-mates'  on my  own  so was happy to join the workshop)  and learnt a lot , particularly about the versatility of t-shirt transfer paper

 Accommodation and food was excellent and  we had very generous table allocations to spread out  - no encroachment here!

 We started with paper collages from magazines,  fused to Vilene then stitched and painted

  Difficult to believe this started life as scaffolding, Chelsea buns and carrot sticks! ( the one above is scaffolding and watermelon)

 These  collages were then scanned and printed onto t - shirt transfer paper at different scales and  have the potential to be used  in a variety of different ways. I'm looking forward to combining prints of details of my stitching with photos of  ropes on boats.

 I'd brought a couple of photos I'd printed onto cotton or silk - these combined with the more intense colours of the transfer prints  offer some interesting possibilities

  On Saturday evening we were given a section  of old map and a piece of hand dyed scrim and asked to think about how we might use them with some interesting, varied results :cut up, stitched into, collaged with other pictures.

 I  was lucky enough to get some sea so  cut it into into  2 sections after copying it and playing around with  different ideas. The one above is  a work in progress , I want to add to the blues from my stash and possibly add photos from   Quilter Guild  AGM earlier in the year as the map is of Llandudno!

The sea I added to a surface of dyed linen scrims in an approximate grid.
Using old maps has given me some ideas for International Threads 'Sign and symbols' quilt I have yet to start. With all the  marshes and orchards around Faversham , there's a  large  variety of marks  to choose from.