July Meeting

I didn't write e report about the July morning meeting as we were all busy doing bits and pieces and there wasn't a lot to photograph.  However, Ann has been busy on the piece of work she started and is producing these lovely designs using whip stitch.

Colleen, has been making bags using hand dyed fabrics and also these lovely little dolls which she is making for the children of visiting Austalian friends. 

The lace was dyed at the last meeting and is being used to decorate the dolls hats.

Jenny was using her skills learnt with Isobel Hall and is making another vessel.

She also brought along this lovely array of fabrics she dyed last month.

I can't remember who these belonged to but thought that they deserved to be seen, they are lovely colours.

The new topic of 'Warriors' seems to be going down quite well and causing a lot of discussion and it has been decided that our October meeting will be spent at the Royal Armouries getting a bit of background for it.

June Meeting

Today I announced the new topic for the next exhibition.  We are going to look at 'Warriors'.  It can be any period, any country, male or female or anything that the title brings to mind.  Most people seemed OK with the idea so hopefully there will be lots of interesting pieces of work coming out.

The postcard challenge got under way with everyone getting their postcards in and changed for a new one.  Now all we have to do is make a postcard size piece of work based on the picture on your postcard.  No one saw what they were choosing, all the cards fitted into identical envelopes.

Several members joined in a 'Dyeing Day'.  We had a really busy time, and everyone enjoyed themselves and was pleased with their results.  We plan to display them all next month when they have been washed and ironed.  We followed some very simple instructions from a very good book called 'Dyeing in a Plastic Bag' by Helen Deighan which demonstrates how you can dye small quantities of fabric at home without make a lot of mess.

 Here are Barbara, Roma and Janet all working hard.

 

One of Barbara's patterned pieces in the making

 

 

Ann wasn't dyeing today.  She has been doing Kantha style stitching and also practising whip stitch on a patterned fabric.  You can't see the stitching very well here but it does look lovely.

June morning meeting

Just five of us attended the morning meeting this month.  Several were busy working on items for another exhibition in August by the Scarborough Stitchers.  It will be held at St Hilda's Church, Ravenscar from the 7th to the 10th August, 10am to 4pm.  A couple of us were doing samples and trying things out.  Maureen was working on a small book using pelmet vilene.  She had seen the technique at the Ryedale Embroiderers' Guild meeting last week.  I was quite pleased with these samples I did from Maggie Beal's newest book New Ideas in Fusing Fabric.  I took the photos at home as I had forgotten my camera again last Thursday.

These are pelmet vilene and acrylic felt bonded together with bondaweb, the one on the right has pink painted bondaweb.  The one on the left had gesso lightly painted over the surface.  Both were then patterned with the soldering iron and then stitched into with either black or pink thread.  Might make interesting book covers.

Exhibition!

What a brilliant exhibition we had this weekend, despite the weather being very showery.  Lots of people came on both days, some of them on Sunday had been told about us by visitors on Saturday.  One comment we received several times was how good it was to have an exhibition of this quality in this area.  So well done ladies.  I took over 60 photographs and I shall make most of them into a booklet but it's a bit too many to sit here downloading onto the blog, so I am just showing one picture of each persons work and the 'Chinese Whispers'. 

The topic of the exhibition was 'Elements' and this was everyone's interpretation.

Shirley did a wonderful display using all four elements, earth, air, water and fire.  This cliff was the star attraction of her display, especially the gull which was made by her husband.

Roma took a monthly photograph of the sky outside her window and used mark making to interpret the clouds.

Moira did 'Earth' and rock strata, soil strata and fossils in this lovely display.

Liz put all four elements into her first picture and the second represents water as snowflakes.

Christina also did 'Earth' showing the change in farming from medieval to modern day

Barbara has taken 'Rainbow's' as her theme using her talent at weaving to make the cushion and blue cloth.

Christine's piece based on the Escher drawing, fascinated everyone.  It is still a work in progress but we all hope she completes it as we are waiting to see the finished piece.

Ann has also chosen 'Earth' and has used mirrors to create these lovely mirror image patterns based on photographs she has that were taken in Australia. 

Jenny uses such subtle colours in her work, these I think are based on photographs taken in France.

Angela has chosen 'Water' as her theme and as we live by the sea she has used the sea in her work.

Val has chosen 'Titanium' as her element and the periodic table.  I have unfortunately cut off her free standing pieces in this picture but she has used them to hold the plants that you can see.

Pamela has used 'Water' for some of her work and also 'Copper, Lead and Gold' for other pieces.

Maureen's pot on the right has featured in earlier blogs when she was making it.  She has used 'Iron' for her theme and based it on a photograph of an old engine that she then distorted on the computer.

Marilyn has done a piece for each element and this is her 'Fire, Air and Water' pieces.

Ann went for 'Water', the piece on the left represents a whirlpool from the southern hemisphere.

Anita chose 'Earth' using memories from a holiday in Peru.  The piece on the left represents the landscape and the minerals mined in Peru.  The piece on the right, is the earth godess Pachamama and some of the crops grown in Peru.

Barbara produced a lovely piece based on a Hokusai painting.  The scarf on the right is hand woven.

Ann is our newest member and didn't have time to do any work on the Elements but this is a piece of her batik work representing sunflowers.

Chinese Whispers number 1.  The photograph is of a windmill, taken at an odd angle.  Most of the pieces of work follow through quite clearly coming from the same design.

Chinese Whispers number 2.  The photograph is of a French antique shop with lots of pots outside and flowering plants in tubs.  How this became a seascape I am not sure.  The first piece of work was based on some of the designs found on the pots and this follows through for a while but then changes completely.

We had fun doing these, and I hope everyone will enjoy the next challenge as much.

Also on display were items from the workshops we did and they all looked really good, we have done a lot of work over the past two years.

April Meeting

I was away for the March meeting, having a lovely time in Bologna so I don't know what happened that day and I have been so busy with the Embroiderers Guild exhibition that I never got the April morning meeting posted, so here we are in the middle of April.

Everyone was busy working today, mostly for our exhibition next month.  Some were tidying up workbooks, some were finishing off pieces and some, like me, were frantically sewing their final piece.  We have planned a 'Dyeing Day' in June, there are a few members who haven't done any dyeing and some who don't like to do it at home, so we thought it would be a good idea to get together and pool our resources and have a go.

Plans for our own exhibition are under way now, the flyers are printed and being distributed, the hall is booked and the display boards hired from the Art Club.  I reminded everyone to bring their 'Chinese Whisper' pieces and there was a groan and some frantic chatter as people tried to remember where they had put them.  That's the only problem with a project that goes over a long period of time.

Here is some of the work that was being done on Thursday.

 

Roma has been to a Batik class and was stitching into her printing.

Ann has produced one of the most beautiful pieces of silk paper I have ever seen.  It really is gorgeous.

Jenny was searching through her stash of coloured papers when I took this picture.

 

Pam is working in beads doing a piece based on the sea.

March morning meeting

I can't believe a week has gone by since our meeting and I haven't done the blog yet.  As usual I forgot to take my camera and there was a lot of good work to look at today.  Val was working on her Elements piece, as was most of the members.  Ann's silk paper she had made was absolutely fantastic, lovely colours and shades.  Pam decided she didn't like the black border she had put round her canvas work and took it out and we all agreed that it looked better.  I had a great morning painting papers for my sketchbook course.  Working in the village hall meant I could spread out and had plenty of room to put the paper out to dry.  Go to my sketchbook blog to see the results.

Time is getting short now, we are a matter of weeks away from our exhibition and I have started on my final piece.  I had thought to do quite a bit of machine embroidery on this piece but it isn't going to work, I think it will be mostly hand sewing so now I am starting to panic that I have left it all a bit late.  It is going fairly well though, and the effect is what I wanted. 

For non members of the group, here are the details of the exhibition.

Hope you can read this OK, the flyers look quite good.  This is a piece of work that was produced at the Dionne Swift workshop last year.

February Meeting

There was plenty of sewing machines and various other bits of electrical equipment as we had arranged a group PAT testing session.  Our thanks to Craig who manfully ploughed through them all much confused by all the soldering irons.

The World War 1 projects are really coming along well and we hope to have them ready to join the exhibitions in April.  There may be one or two more to add in at a later date but they are looking good.  We have two poems to include as well which enhances the body of work.  See what you think.

Don't know if you can read the words but the poem is Perhaps by Vera Britten and is reflected in the broken hearted piece and the large felted piece.

 

This poem is by Jessie Pope and is about women working during the war.  Some of the other pieces aren't quite finished yet but they are well on their way.

 

 

 

Everyone is now pushing on towards completing work for the exhibition.  Ann was preparing a large piece of silk paper, Moira was also working with silk paper to produce a book.  Marilyn was lacing her work up, so that must be near completion.  Jenny was working on this lovely piece of felt, not sure what it will be but it is certainly eye catching.

 

This is Roma's felting, based on a photograph she took in Scotland.