Susan Norman Workshop

We were so pleased that Fiber artist, Susan Norman was available to spend this beautiful Saturday with us, sharing some of the secrets to her incredible thread painted art. This workshop was all about developing a technique.

Susan explained how she uses photographs to help her achieve the look she wants. Working to duplicate the effects in the background and bringing out the details of the foreground.........all with fabric and thread and her sewing machine.
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Here, you see the photo she worked from and the finished piece beside it.

She showed us how to create a “painterly” background by building layers with tulle followed by stitching with thread.

She generously brought with her, a fabulous stash of tulle and thread in wonderful colours for our use.
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We were instructed to think of our needle and thread as a “very fine brush” with which we would paint our creations.

Susan showed us how to focus on details............she took a single flower petal and demonstrated how to go about doing a simple contour outline of a petal, how to do this with the addition of tulle or fabric and finally using thread alone to create the depth, shading and shadows we see in each delicate portion of our subject.

Participants eagerly followed instructions, Susan was able to answer the many questions put to her and gave us terrific one on one guidance. Although our projects are not yet finished, and as you can see some chose to do backgrounds while others tried their hand at abstracts and yet others, florals.

Susan pointed out the strengths in each piece along with ideas and suggestions on how we might best proceed to develop them into a completed art work.

This workshop was all about developing a technique and it looks like the guild now has a few new thread painters among it's members.
What a terrific way to spend a Saturday.
Submitted by Jill B.