Sunflowers in February

Textile Art workshop for Year 2 at St Martins, Hereford

Year 2 had been studying famous people as a topic and had been introduced to Van Gogh. We took the sunflowers pictures as inspiration and made a wall hanging to decorate the reception hallway.

It was quite a challenge to work with all 48 children, involve them in the process and still come up with a respectable piece of artwork to display at the end of the day!

The children were divided into groups of 8 and then we split the day into half hour sessions. The idea for this wall hanging has evolved over 3 weeks, I really wanted the children to work with fabric and would have loved to have included some sewing. Reality check meant that we swopped stitches for glue but we were all very happy with the effect from using lots of different fabrics.

There's more photos on the Make and Take Away Facebook page click HERE to see

Had an email back from the school......

Thanks so much for the work that you did with our year two children.
The wallhanging looks fantastic and many people have sought me out to
tell me how much they love it.....so thanks

Review of 2010

ECHO

It was difficult to know how much we had achieved at ECHO until just before Christmas. The shop looked wonderful and comparing it too what we had for sale the previous year demonstrated just how far we had come.

There is so much happening all the time we don't always record all the achievements, brilliant ideas and moments of genius that go into making it the special place it is.

Looking ahead we need to become more sustainable and I'm currently writing a report for the board looking at our online options.

Make and Take Away

Elsewhere workshops happened for Shropshire Short Breaks, Leominster Youth Centre, Surestart and Queenswood. However, even Make and Take Away will not escape the funding cuts as the current climate has caused every department of local authority to examine how spend every penny which will bring about changes this year. Last year many clients would not commit to spending as they were unsure just what their budgets were going to be until late into the year. But bring on the change there are always opportunities.

On a very positive note the studio is up and running with power, heating and nearly everything in the right place. Can't wait to spend more time in there very soon.

Spring forward

The warm weather has made a huge difference at the Echo shop. We have been able to create a mini market in the front porch and generated plenty of sales as a result. Last week we were visited by Sheila who used to run Chattels in Hay on Wye. She passed some great advice on how to style the shop and I've spent the last few days rearranging and 'zone-ing' as she suggested. Seem to be fixated with changing the layout but hopefully this will be it for a while. At least until Wednesday when Jan, my job share, comes in and suggests an even better way!

Lovely day shopping in Cardiff on Saturday, it was as good as everyone said. Found Paperchase and bought gorgeous paper and then discovered the most fantastic bead shop. We bought beads, of course, but also some coloured hemp cord and lots of sculpey.

Last week I tried out a Clover product which was meant to 'simply' make a daisy shape in needle felt, Broke 5 felting needles and didn't turn out as expected. Rachel asked why I'd made an octopus.