The youngsters let loose with fabric crayons and learnt how to sew on the sewing machine, they had a go sewing buttons and designing the banner.

I am so impressed with all the hard work. The wall hanging is how proudly hung in the community centre.

ArtStart is registered as an Arts Award Centre and trained to deliver this programme, but it can’t provide a base for young people to come to us, so we don’t have regular clients. Not having a base also makes it hard for people to find us and see what we are doing.  We are planning a taster day for both of these projects, in September and hope they prove to be popular!

ArtSTART always loves going mobile for one off activities and of course helping out other clubs by providing cover/support when needed.

Last week we went to Winchester School of Art to help deliver a print workshop with AimHigher Children in Care as part of their Spring Event. The day was lead by WSA print technician and supported by ArtSTART.

There were about 15 youths ranging from the age of 13 – 20 and lots of mentors so it was a very busy day! We got stuck into monoprinting and mirror writing (And testing if it worked when printed – The writing should appear as normal but you have to write backwards. This was hilarious and even I couldn’t do it properly!) We made a group print, printed a variety of leaves and the workshop ended with a tour of the school. It was a terrific day and here are the photos to prove. Thank you to WSA for inviting us!

Day: Friday’s 4:10 – 5:30pm

Venue: The Colour Factory – Opposite River Park Leisure Centre.

Teacher: Professional artist and craft maker Donna Vokes. Donna holds a full CRB and regularly works within schools and art centres to deliver art workshops as a freelance teacher under the name of ArtSTART.

Course Information: Sessions involve sewing by hand, having a go on a sewing machine, learning how to sew buttons on, designing items to make, pattern cutting and fabric painting. Activities are suitable for beginners as well as advanced and are tailored to suit different ages.

Activities include making: Scary Pumpkin and Ghostly Lampshade, Trick or Treat Pumpkin Bag , Stuffed Felt Skeleton/Ghost,   Stylish Puffy Pillowcase Cover, Cool Chunky Woolly Warmer, Cheeky Face Canvas Bag.

More information here: Textile club

I hope you’ve had a great summer. Art club will be starting up next week. Art Club has been running for two years now and numbers have been down this year. To take a break and make a change, I will be delivering Stitch Club to those over the age of 7, on Wednesday’s as an after school club rather than during Monday lunch time. After school club offers a full hour as opposed to 30 minutes during lunchtime club’s thus offering greater value for money at only £5 per child per week. This is just to trial the idea. If your child is keen to join art club, please register your interests by email. donnavokes@hotmail.com or post your comments here on our blog.

The dates for Stitch Club are as follows:

Starting on Wednesday 22^nd Sept 3.30 – 4.30 and ending on 20^th October. This 5 week course is £25.

Booking forms are available to download below. Please click on the link.

Stitch Club Booking Form

If you are new and haven’t already filled in a media release form, please download the form below.

MASTER Parent media release form – general

As ever, it’s always a pleasure to work with the children. New faces are always welcome. I look forward to seeing you!

What will we be creating?

We will be getting ready for Halloween, making a stuffed felt skeleton/ghost, trick or treat bag as well as designing our own lampshades and puppets.

This year ArtSTART visited St Bede School in the centre of Winchester to work with 45 children over two days. The children were split up into 5 groups and each had a   workshop in flag making.

We experimented with using fabric crayons directly onto the flags. These were later ironed and attached to a rod.  Some children used a mixture of drawing and sewing skills and all the children created beautifully illustrated flags representing this years theme, Winchester Myths and Legends. The children also draw a picture each which were then sewed onto two large banners.

The children took part in a procession along with other local schools and together we walked through the city proudly waving our flags and banners.

It was a pleasure to work with the school and it’s students who all behaved so well and worked so hard.

Whilst I was on the sewing machine with each child in turn I got the children designing their pillow cases with fabric crayons. It was great fun. The colours are fixed to the fabric with an iron. They could design whatever they wanted and I found it really sweet that most made mother’s day pillow cases.

The next session will involve sewing the fabrics together to finish the case and teaching the back stitch.

Towards the end of the last session, some of the children were trying to teach each other how to draw managa style and we got talking about it and what makes it unique. I admit that this isn’t a strong point for me as I prefer to draw in my own style, but we all agreed to do managa art today and I brought in manga colouring books to use as a reference point.

I showed the children how to draw manga eyes and faces. Most of the children preferred to copy the images out of the book rather than draw their own. I was reluctant for them to do this and even more reluctant when the tracing paper came out! But actually I think this worked really well as it taught the basics and got their creativity juices flowing. .

manga pet

Activities – Running Stitch

The children in Art Club love sewing so much and wanted to do more and more activities in this medium. It’s great to see, but I felt that these activities were starting to take over the club so I asked if I could run a Stitch Club.

Whilst Art club is used to having between 5 – 10 children (It clashes with sport and music clubs which are very popular) I was not prepared for the15 children who turned up on the first day! It was a lovely surprise and I was very thankful that I had lots of spare materials. The problem is that I only have 1 sewing machine!

I made it clear that the club was not free and any who wanted to continue had to pay the following week. This whistled the group to a more manageable size of 12.

The first week we started off with the running stitch. I have no idea of the level of skill, but know that they have been introduced to sewing in small groups but most haven’t used a sewing machine.