THE WOK AND GRILL
by Carol H
What’s your name? Carol Holloway
Where do you live? Sefton Close, in the 1960s housing development behind the Green Man pub
How long have you lived in Trumpington? 25 years
Can you tell us a bit about your panel? This is the second panel I did for the Stitch in Time project and it focuses on the Wok n Grill restaurant on Trumpington High Street – it’s in an early 17th century building that used to be the Coach & Horses pub.
What inspired you?
When we did a workshop on transferring images to fabric, I got a photo on fabric of the Wok n Grill given to me to work on. I liked what I did at the workshop so much, I decided to make that into a panel. In fact, it was one of my son’s favourite places to be taken for a meal when he was little as they have as much ice cream as you want for dessert! Before it was the Wok n Grill, I remember it as a proper pub. It had a rather enigmatic and moody Russian man in charge, we used to drink there occasionally. So I do feel some connection to the place.
What materials & techniques did you use?
I used a lot of the lovely fabrics from our fabric sample books, donated by various people, for the building and trees, and some green wool tops for the hedge. I also used fabric painting for the sky. I stitched on the fabric and gave some texture to the sky using free machine embroidery. I used reverse machine appliqué for the windows on the pub, but with hindsight the fabric I was using frayed too much for this technique. If I did it again, I would change that. I had never used fabric paint before and was really pleased with the effects I got. I had dabbled in the other techniques but this was the first time I had really used free machine embroidery and reverse machine appliqué properly.