November Meeting

Two exhibitions on in Scarborough until the 28th November, Picturesque Framers and Gallery on St. John's Road, Falsgrave have Ayton Artists and Friends, Monday to Saturday from 9.30am to 4pm with tea and cake available on Saturday along with crafts for sale.  This is a mixed media exhibition with artists and textile artists together.  The other exhibition is at Woodend, next door to the art gallery, where Helen Birmingham has her 1568 Hearts exhibition.  This is a commemoration of the end of WW1 and each of the 1568 hearts represents a day of the war.  All done in individual styles, mostly stitch but inspired by the hearts that the soldiers made while recuperating in hospitals.  Both are worth a visit if you are in the area.

A busy day again on Thursday, this time we were printing.  We had stamps, stencils, gelliplates, paint and markel sticks on the go and most were working up to 2 o'clock getting lots of printed fabric to stitch on.  Here are some of the work that was done.  Not sure who's is who's.

This stamp is a string print taken from an ordnance survey map.

These are the leaves that Lesley had left after using them for printing.  She is hoping to varnish them and use them in something else.

October Meeting

I hadn't realised I'd forgotten to do this blog until I was updating the Guild one and saw that I hadn't updated this one for five weeks.
Well we had a lovely messy day dyeing fabric.  Some members had never done any dyeing before so those that had brought in their dyes and we made up some plastic bags full of fabrics and eventually we all went home with some very bright pieces of fabric for future use.  There was a bit of magenta and some blue left so I took them home, mixed them up and got some lovely raspberry coloured fabric and thread.  I think I will buy some black dye to tone down the colours for the next time I decided to do some dyeing.  It's really easy to do at home when you use the plastic bag method and not really messy if you remember to put your gloves on.

Here are some of the results.  Look at these lovely colours in the cat litter trays (sorry cats).

I kept my wet wipes with the dye mop ups and have got some pretty pieces I can use as backgrounds.

Fabrics all wrapped up ready to be taken home.

Not everyone was dyeing and this lovely crab and cliff face were being stitched.

Next month we are continuing with the messy work and doing some printing.  Useful for the pieces we weren't too keen on from the dyeing.

August and September

I hadn't realised that I had missed the August blog.  We had a reasonable turn out as I know many are on holiday or looking after grandchildren.  We just did sewing and getting on with our work and made plans for a dyeing day in October. 

The problem with leaving it so long to do the blog I can't remember which is who's work so I will leave you to just enjoy the photographs.

September was another meeting where people just carried on with their work but there was some interesting work to see.

Christina's piece from the Embroiderers' Guild summer school with Anne Brookes.

Think this is Kath's work using chiffons'

Carolyn had been printing on fine fabric

Maureen printed this fabric some weeks ago using Markel sticks and is now embroidering it.

Next month we are all bringing in our fabric and dyes to have a day dyeing together!

July

I wasn't at the July meeting and so I don't know what they were all getting up to but I can tell you what I was doing.  I was in France with Crafty Retreats enjoying a whole weeks workshop with Cas Holmes.  I also had a day in Paris before I started on the workshop then traveled down on the train to Limoges where Phil picked me up and took me to the lovely home she shares with Fran.  There were seven of us on the course two German ladies who live in Hong Kong, one lady from Australia who was there with her husband (he spent a very relaxing week reading, drawing and writing) and four from the UK.  Cas kept us very busy the first few days but we got a day off to go to Aubusson to have a guided tour round the weaving factory. There are some good tutors going out next summer if you fancy a week away and still a few places available.  If you don't want to go quite so far, Fran and Phil also have a studio in Cornwall where they offer week long courses during the winter months.  Either way, the food Fran cooks will be wonderful.

Some photographs of the lovely area around Mallety.

This was in the Aubusson factory.  There were rooms full of threads on spools like this one.  Every colour and shade that you could think of.

Workshop with Jane Hare

What a brilliant day we all had.  Thanks go to Jane and Linda who put in so much work so that we could have a really good day.  Jane must have spent quite sometime preparing everything so that the day went smoothly and we all took home a pile of samples.  Linda spent all day in the kitchen with steamers and pans of boiling fabric and paper.  We were doing Eco-dyeing, sometimes called Botanical Dyeing, either way, we made some lovely pieces with it.  Everyone was tired at the end of the day but more than happy with what they had done.  I managed to remember to take photographs and have got loads here to show.
Firstly, we dyed pieces of an old pink wool blanket using just vinegar and water.

I photographed mine so I would be able to recognise the button when they all came out of the pans.

Next we did two long strips of wallpaper lining paper and four small squares of another paper which may have been tyvek but Jane wasn't too sure about that.  These were mordanted with an iron solution of ferrous sulphate.  Again I photographed my roll before putting it in the pot.

We had placed one piece of paper over the top of the other with the leaves between and got two copies of the same arrangement.
Next we did a length of cotton fabric with kitchen roll over the top.  This was dyed with an alum mordant. 

Some of the darker images didn't photograph so well because of the shadows in the hall.  Next we did watercolour paper with a vinegar mordant.  We each did 12 squares of these with two images of each leaf.

Our last pieces were 12 pieces of cartridge paper and no mordant was used.  Everything was timed so that the last pieces went into the pot as the first pieces were ready to come out. A really great day, can't recommend it enough.