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

 

Design Stella Schofield Adams January Meeting 2019

Stella arrived ready to inspire and introduce us to the elements of design so our work would become more personal.
We had been asked to bring a few items which we liked and intrigued us to use as our inspiration. The items for inspiration included stones, amethyst, citrine ,shell, wood, a flower and a silk rod.
 Our first task was to choose one of our objects and without looking at the paper draw it in various ways with our non dominant hand. 
This was to encourage us to look closely and carefully in different lights at our chosen object.
After the drawing we were asked to choose fabrics and threads in appropriate colours and "stitch a sketch" of our object or a part of it. [See our efforts below]

 

We were then  asked to make another design from our "sewn sketch" Our second design was completely different from the object we had started with.

 It was a very enjoyable day and very unlike our usual workshops where we produce a textile item. 
A big thank you must go to Stella for setting us along the road to design and hopefully over the next few months we will be able to observe  better and feel more confident in having a go at designing for ourselves.

Christmas Meeting December 2018

Our meeting on Tuesday started off with the normal business meeting but the hall was decorated with a tree, star garlands and wrapped Christmas presents for Secret Santa. So if anyone needed reminding that it was Christmas there were plenty of clues!

Each member brought a wrapped present for secret Santa, placed it on the table and took a raffle ticket. As the tickets were drawn each member chose a present.

Our Christmas competition was to use our stars from last month to make a Christmas decoration. We then voted for our favourite and the winner was the pretty blue and white garland. A big thank you to all who took part.
For our activity we  learned or practiced a new stitch; the Quaker Stitch. The stitch was relatively easy once we got into the rhythm of it. We then wrote our name or a shortened version of it.

 After the stitching we were ready for our Jacob's Join which looked very inviting. Thank you to all members who had brought food to share. It was very tasty.

Thank you to all members who took part in the meeting and Happy Christmas to everyone and we hope to see you all in the New Year.