A wet weekend in July

Pat's report on this year's Summer School.....

I went along to the Regional Residential Summer School at Alston Hall for the first time this year and I’ve had such a good time. 

I chose to do the Pictorial Collages workshop with Liliane Taylor, and we dyed fabrics and papers, did fast sketching exercises getting to know our plant/container subjects, did Batik dying, wet ink on wet sketches, etc, and then launched into our ‘masterpieces’ with non-stop advice from our tutor.  We worked till 10.30pm on Friday and Saturday nights and started Saturday and Sunday mornings at 9am, only stopping briefly for coffee and meal breaks (excellent food!) and sleep.  It was exhausting!  But lovely to be so engrossed in the subject for two-and-a-half days. 

The whole atmosphere was friendly and cheerful, I’ve met some lovely people, and the staff at Alston Hall were magnificent.  The other workshops were Modern 3-D Crewelwork and Books to Cherish, and we all had beautiful results to ‘show and tell’ by Sunday afternoon.  However, I’m pleased I chose a course which was new to me, which allowed me to learn many techniques I had never tried before, and I ended up with a real feeling of achievement. 

Thank you North West Region for putting on such an excellent opportunity for fun and instruction!

Pat Knifton 

No wonder you were pleased, Pat.  This is lovely.  (Lesley)