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.



February Morning Meeting

Just a few of us in today we all got some work done as well as putting the world to rights. 

I have put a new blog of mine on for you all to look at if you want.  I have signed up to the Distant Stitch Sketchbook course and as it is all online I have to have a blog of my own.  The first module is on colour so some of it is stuff I have done before but it is good to remind oneself and there are some new things to do as it goes along.  I am just doing their own certificate at the moment but if I keep all the logs up to date, I could switch to City and Guilds at a later date as all the work is the same.  Not sure I need C&G for all the extra cost.

Barbara brought in her pieces for the WW1 exhibitions that will be going on around the area.  We are doing a collection of pieces based on 'Women in the War' and made to look like the medals some of them deserved.  Barbara has focused on the Red Cross and this piece looks really good.

 

Unfortunately the red on red colour hasn't photographed as well as it could hav.  The second piece is weaving the Barbara has done based on a field of poppies.  She is also doing a larger piece for the exhibition that goes to the Royal Armouries next year.

 

Pam is getting on with her canvas work depicting various minerals.

 

Marilyn was attaching birds to her piece of work.

January Meeting

Happy New Year to everyone who looks at this Blog.

We had a good meeting this month.  A workshop has been arranged for later in the year with Alysn Midgelow-Marsden so we are all looking forward to that.

The ladies who are joining in the WW1 project that is running in this area, have chosen their topics to work on.  I am doing a piece based on the women munitions workers because my husbands grandmother was a munitions worker in London during the first World War and I think this will be a small tribute to the work she did. We are basing our pieces on medals, with the idea that all the women represented deserved medals for what they did.  Most of the pieces will be based on 'Women in War' and we hope to produce a small but interesting display. 

Plans are starting to take shape now for our Exhibition on the 10th and 11th May this year at Ayton Village Hall, near Scarborough.  The postcode is YO13 9HY for those of you with sat-navs.  It will be from 10am to 4pm and the topic for the main exhibition is 'Elements' so please come along and meet us.

Some of the work this month was interesting.

Jenny had some interesting results using kitchen towel and she has mounted the pieces onto felt and is now stitching into them.

Moira's hand dyed fabrics are going to make a lovely seascape.

Liz had brought in her workbook from her 'snowflake' project

 

Liz was also working with some hand printed papers that she is making into books.

Last Meeting of 2013

There were 16 of us at the last meeting and we had quite a busy session.  Most were stitching or drawing, painting was not indulged in as we were all dressed up ready for our lunch out at Betton Farm. 

Six of us had a talk with a lady who is setting up a textile exhibition based on World War 1.  We are joining in as representatives of our group.  The exhibition will tour local libraries during 2014 but in 2015 it will go to the Royal Armouries in Leeds and then onto Portsmouth.  It will also display in York but I can't remember where.  Hopefully there will be even more venues over the four years commemorating the war.  We had a good session bouncing ideas around and have decided to produce pieces of work based on the shapes of medals but about A4 size.  The theme will be 'Women in World War 1' and looking at the different roles they played.  Hope to have some ideas on paper next month.  Some of the pieces already produced are quite dark so we are going to try and do 'colourful'.  There should be a website in action in the new year so I will put up a link to it when it gets going.

We cleared away about twelve o'clock and headed out for a really nice lunch.  Afterwards we came back and collected our things and headed home.  No photographs this time as I forgot my camera again. 
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.