An award winning tutor with North East Lincolnshire Council’s Community Learning Service (CLS) has a new course starting this week.

Creative arts tutor Jo Smith was awarded first prize at the Open Exhibition at the Steel Rooms in Brigg earlier this month.

Jo said: “It is great to have won first prize at the fantastic Steel Rooms Open Exhibition 2014, especially to have won with this particular piece, Dad – Last Birthday, which was originally produced as part of a triptych and created as a personal remembrance.

“The three pieces together represent his youth, before marriage and children, how I remember him from my childhood and how his life came to an end, as a much loved dad and granddad who bravely fought a battle with cancer that he was never to win.

“My mum has his youth on her wall and I have the other piece displayed at home. I think he’d be really pleased both with my win and with being in the gallery as he was always so supportive of all my creative endeavours.”

Jo’s new ‘Soft Furnishings’ course starts on Thursday 16 October for nine weeks, at the Thrunscoe Centre in Cleethorpes.

Sessions last from 6pm to 9pm and will cover a range of techniques from on-lay and bonded appliqué to patchwork and quilting, embellishing, transfers, hand and machine stitching and more.

With a little bit of mend and make do thrown in, you can recycle old clothes and fabrics into new items for the home and family, such as heirloom quilts for the children, shabby chic hearts and birds – the possibilities are endless

All welcome from complete beginners to the more experienced. The course fee is £85.

For more information about Community Learning Service’s art courses please email [email protected] or visit one of the following: Twitter: @nelincs_cls, Facebook: www.facebook.com/nelincs.cls, Instagram: @nelincs_cls. Alternatively, call 01472 326291.