Thread Bins Anne Cavell April Meeting 2019

Quite a few of our members had expressed an interest in making one of Anne's thread bins and so this month Anne led the workshop. A picture of Anne's thread bin is below and you can see that when not in use it can be twisted and folded flat.

 Member started by using the inner circle of a tambour ring and drawing two circles from cardboard and cutting them out for supports. Two larger circles were cut out in material, gathered and fitted over the card. The circles were joined wrong side together to make the base.

Anne's demonstration piece

 The two tubes [sewn at home] were fitted inside each other and attached to the base one tube at a time so that the material was the right side out.

 All members finished their thread bin and were able to take them home ready to use. They will find then jolly useful for collecting their cut threads.

However Anne had another string to her bow and had suggestions as to what members could do with their spare outer circle. She showed us how they could be used as a frame for a small embroidery. [see below]

 A big thank you to Anne for helping us make something which will be very useful.

Chocolates Mary Seaman [morning] My Work - a talk Jacky Cardy [afternoon] March Meeting 2019

This month's meeting was in two halves.The morning session was led by one of our own members Mary Seaman who had brought a box of chocolates! On closer inspection these were not real chocolates but hand sewn and embroidered ones. [See below]

 We were provided with a card circle and either white or brown material. Mary demonstrated how to gather the material and then stuff to form the shape. A special slip knot was demonstrated so that we could pull the gathers really tightly.

 Once the gathers were secure, we then shaped it in our hands and the chocolate was ready for embellishment.

The chocolates were embellished with stitch and beads in suitable chocolate colours.

 It was a fun morning and we all took home a chocolate. Thank you to Mary for leading the session and for passing on tips from her inexhaustible depth of knowledge.

Our afternoon speaker was Jacky Cardy who came to talk about her work and how it had developed. 
Jacky spoke about how she made her felt and then machined and hand stitched into it often to make plant like organic forms. She often experimented with how much she felted the fibres leaving them quite soft and open before stitching.
She is most well-known for her pretty brooches which often contain silk velvet and have sinuous forms.
The colours of her work are beautiful and range from muted misty tones to bright primary colours.
Her talk was interspersed with lots of samples of her work and it was a pleasure for us to look more closely at them when she had finished speaking. There are a few pictures below where you can see the shapes and stitches better.

It was a very enjoyable and amusing talk with lots of work samples to inspire us. I think quite a few of us will be getting out our felt making equipment over the weekend!
Thank you to Jacky for a very interesting and inspiring talk.

Books/Journals Sandie Mayer February Meeting 2019

This month we were pleased to welcom Sandie Mahyer to lead our February Meeting. Sandie had been to our group before and most of our members knew her already.
Sandie brought with her an array of handmade books, from small to large in size and in content from specific subjects to journals of holidays. The covers were all very attractive and made you want to dip into them. [See below]

Sandie told us that the book we were making was our book so it was therefore up to us what the content would be, the size and the colours.
Sandie demonstrated how we would make the pages. They would be cut and  torn around the edges and then soaked in water. They were painted in Koh-i-Noor dyes on the wet surface causing the dyes to run and make patterns. They were stacked on creased plastic across each other to make interesting lines with more creased plastic on top.

Book pages drying between plastic

While our pages were drying we began to cut out our book covers in pelmet vilene. We then painted and decorated the cover with silk paints. When dry they would be covered in acrylic wax and then could be sewn into or additional shapes/pictures glued on top.

This is about as far as most of us got with our books. So we took all the pages and covers home to dry before we could start filling up the pages. 
As members finish pages I will post them on the blog but it will probably take until the next meeting.
Thank you to Sandie for a fun meeting and inspiring us to want to fill up our books.

A completed book cover