Hannah Lamb at City of York Embroiderers' Guild

Hannah Lamb - Original Cyanotype Print

Recently Hannah Lamb came to both speak and give a workshop to the City of York Embroiderers' Guild.  Hannah is a textile artist living in West Yorkshire.  She is inspired by landscape particularly of her current home and her childhood home in rural Buckinghamshire.  Her work incorporates cyanotypes (a photographic process that produces a blue print), eco-printing (binding plant material in fabric or paper to stain and mark), stitching and the use of found objects.  She has looked at quietude as an antidote to stress and has "mapped" her walks as a personal response to the landscape working both in situ and through stitch.

Hannah Lamb - Linear Mapping Walk 4

Hannah led a workshop in decorative darning - a technique that allows time to think and stitch.  She talked us through the process, discussed the use of colour on our warp and weft threads and the sorts of threads we might use and then set us loose to experiment with a particular shape.  Here's my work:

My work from the Decorative Darning Workshop with Hannah Lamb

Darning in an embroidery hoop

Hannah gave us details about more complicated darning techniques we could try if we wanted to take things further.  I already have some ideas about how I should like to develop this technique for my own work - watch this space...