I’ve just returned from a week at a Burnbrae, near Kelso and stayed in a cottage just next door to the studio. It’s always fun to teach there as the studio and support is great for students and tutor. Pat & Sam’s daughter, Yvette, has now taken over running the show and did a great job looking after us all, with coffee, tea and home-made biscuits when needed, and soup and rolls, cheese, fruit and more cake at lunch time.

The Borders is peaceful and full of inspiration with lovely rolling hills, agricultural landscapes and lots of historic places to visit. We discovered an interesting gallery at Dunbar called The Found Gallery. It is full of high quality works of art and well worth a visit. Nearby at St Boswell’s is a marvellous bookshop with lots of individual books, not usually available  in ordinary book shops, and space to browse and enjoy coffee and cake too!

I had a very friendly and hard working group exploring possible ways of ‘constructing a fabric’ during the 2 day workshop. Here are some pieces started during the workshop.

Val’s work in progress; design work and cloth paper ready to be worked further.

Some people worked with fabric, thread and cloth paper which they had prepared.

Celtic symbols and rocks were Jean’s inspiration

Ali started to combine ideas for a book structure

Combining elements with stitch and seams was an important part of the workshop too.

Jenni started to put elements together

Pat started to prepare some units based on skyscrapers

The two days passed too quickly and there was lots that we didn’t have time to do. I have been invited back next year, so shall have another opportunity to enjoy creative time at Burnbrae.