Includes homemade lunch and refreshments
Repurpose and upcycle everyday discarded materials such as coffee pods, drinks cans and baby wipes. When adjusting our thinking to using materials which won’t have lasting or detrimental effects on our world, it is amazing how often this thinking enables us to extend our creativity.
In this project we will use discarded materials to build a textured and exciting surface using simple techniques to help us to see new uses for our throw away items. Transform these into fancy, lush surfaces using embossing, colouring, stitching and more.
About the tutor
Alysn Midgelow-Marsden is an experienced freelance artist in fine art textiles, an author of several
books and numerous articles, a tutor and a gallery director. Awards include the Bernina Award for
the most Innovative use of the sewing machine, NZ, 2015. In addition, Alysn has professional
qualifications in Textiles and Embroidery, Professional Arts Practice, E-commerce. Alysn lived in the
Midlands of England for most of her life, and developed the Beetroot Tree Gallery, moving to New
Zealand in 2012.
Tutor Statement:
Alysn says: “I have an experimental and curious nature leading to continuously evolving works and
media; investigating new dimensions as they develop. The history and meaning of the materials I
choose is often critically important to the development of the pieces. Currently I am working in
copper, bronze, brass, stainless steel and pewter in the form of metal shims and woven metal fabrics
and wires, combined with a variety of papers, fabrics, pens, paints, threads and natural objects. I find
that it is a continuing pleasure to adapt my ideas into formats which can be taken on by fibre artists,
embroiderers or other creatives”
What you will need to bring
Backing fabric. No larger than 30cm2/A4 -ish. A non-stretchy, medium weight fabric such as calico or cotton (instead of using interfacing)
Baking parchment. Approx. 50cm (*)
Bondaweb or equivalent. ¼ m2 is plenty. (*)
Mixture of threads – weights and colours
Mixture of beads – sizes and colours
A collection of reclaimed materials, including metals such as:
Puree Tubes
Coffee Pods
Sparkling Wine foil tops and wires
Sweet paper foils and coloured plastic
Tablet blister packs
Coffee filter papers
Tea bags
Baby/face wipes
Wire from spiral notepads
Electrical wire cut offs
Crisp packets/ground coffee packets – plastic but often with a metal coloured surface.
Anything other metals/wires or materials you are intrigued enough by to put on one side
Note about Baby/face wipes:
If you are buying these, look for 100% cotton ones.
😊Ideally you will use these to wipe up other paints and dyes over time, then keep these ‘dirty’ ones. Let them dry out.
☹Don’t keep and bring along wipes used for any personal purposes
Note about coffee pods:
If you don’t have a machine which uses these, just send out word that you are looking for these and you will be inundated!
First scrape out the coffee grounds, give these to your compost or worm bin, wash and dry the pod. It is made of coloured aluminium which we can use.
Note about Coffee filters:
Tip out the used grounds and allow the papers to dry
Note about t-bags:
Leave the used t-bag to dry for a day, then cut open, remove leaves or herbal tea and leave the bag to dry. I find that t-bags dipped for a short time develop a deeper colour when dried than those left to ‘stew’, and berry flavoured herbal teas can give lovely ‘pink’ coloured papers.