A little Strip of Leaves - Amanda Clayton October Meeting 2025

 Amanda Clayton, a well-known textile artist, arrived at the hall and immediately began setting up strips and strips of leaves all hand embroidered but every leaf hand embroidered or created in a different way. See below.

Her embroidery technique of using white/natural threads, varying fabrics in neutral colours bared the basics of embroidery to thread, stitch and fabric, without the interference of colour.

Amanda provided a whole array of white threads and leaf templates for us to use as we were going to make our own little strip of leaves.

Firstly we were asked to use the shape of a favourite leaf, place it under our sheer fabric and trace with a marker pen. Using running stitch and three different types of thread we then started stitching around the leaf shape.

 

We were amazed by how much difference using a different thread type made to the leaf.

Amanda then showed us more samples and ways of embroidering our leaves. We started by filling in some of our leaves with stitch and then cutting out leaves in varying fabrics and stitching them to the strip.

Amanda Clayton

Amanda Clayton

Amanda then showed us different ways of joining fabric together to make a feature of the join and how to cut away fabrics to expose a leaf shape in a different fabric.

Amanda Clayton

Amanda Clayton

The options for creating the leaves was infinite and we all had our minds opened to using thread type, fabric and embroidery technique.
We were fascinated by what was possible and it was a very thought provoking day.

A big thank you goes to Amanda for sharing her work with us and extending our thoughts on what is possible in embroidery. It was a very enjoyable day and we all took our instructions with us to finish our leaves at home.