Earlier this month textile artist, Kate Findlay delivered a workshop to Year 8 students. She showed the girls examples of her work, which includes animals and landscapes.  Kate creates beautiful layered work, using hand dyed fabrics, which she dyes herself. She uses applique to join the layers together, and embellishes her work with printing, stitching, and fabric paints.

Kate’s most recent work is inspired by the Hadron Collider, and is much more abstract, and incorporates flashing lights.

Year 8 took part in a workshop based on E-textiles, fabrics that enable digital components to be embedded in them (such as lights and batteries).   They made a flashing star, using LED lights, with a circuit sewn in between two layers of felt, and connected to a battery with special conducting thread. They also decorated stars by appliqueing shiny fabrics, and sewing on beads or sequins. The end results looked brilliant as the girls created either a broach, or  a Christmas tree decoration.

Kate also spent time with Year 10 and 11 textile students, showcasing some new techniques.

"Kate brought in some of her own pieces and demonstrated new techniques she uses. One technique she showed us was confetti, which uses small pieces of fabric cut up into small pieces scattered on fabric and secured in place by netting. She also showed us how dyeing our own fabrics can be really effective which she uses a lot in her own work as well as applique. It was a really interesting workshop and we got to try out a lot of the techniques ourselves."

NATALIE - yEAR 10