Scrap Store.

Basingstoke now has a Scrap Store which had its' official opening on Friday; this is something of a late innovation for the town as I know that many other cities and towns have had one for many years. It is still in temporary accommodation but hopes eventually to move into a permanent setting which will have easier access. The store has been set up by Kirsty Whitlock a local textile artist who was lately the Embroiderers’ Guild Scholar. If you have not seen her work online or at Alexander Palace, take a look via the link.

The idea is that organizations pay a yearly fee, currently £25, and then can go and fill a carrier bag with goodies donated by local businesses; when I say goodies, I mean things like odd shapes of plastic, boxes, cardboard tubes, fabric scraps, in fact scrap to most but the aficionado of such things. My husband said it sounded just like my art room and I must say he was not far wrong.

I found some offcuts of foam board and museum board which were just the thing for mounting the work of my day centre group. The stitched work relates to a project on faces which took us many, many months and was completed in 2013.It has been waiting for me to find inspiration as to how to put it together. I just found the list of some of the ideas we covered along the way, which included:

1.     The basics of drawing a face.

2.     Mexican Glyphs, images from the British Museum.

3.     Using Ink Tense crayons to draw faces on paper and fabric.

4.     Applique faces, looking at the work and mask collection of Jude Hill.

5.     Taking black and white photos, turning them into ‘photocopies’ in Photoshop and colouring them in.

6.     Print out the face and place it onto a drawn body. Make a card in the style of Claudine Hellmuth. Wax the image.

7.     Make ‘stuffies’.