World textile day

A reminder for tomorrow only.

           

Hearts and flowers.

Carol has been working on embroidering a convict bonnet for the mammoth project being run by Christina Henri 'down under' This is the name of the poor unfortunate who was convicted and deported to Australia.

This is the back of the bonnet embroidered so expertly with Heart and roses. The bees are such a lovely addition.The bonnet will also include the name of the ship she embarked on and the date.There have already been several exhibitions of the bonnets so far received.The final count is to be 25,000 to commemorate the women who were sent away after committing crimes.These crimes were often committed in desperation and were sometimes as trivial as taking a crust of bread because they were starving !

Carol also showed us her sunflower piece, now completed.

A welcome bright addition to what was a very gloomy day.

More coast.

Debby had bought a frame with multi openings which she had filled with her coastal pieces on a small scale,they look so very effective.

 

She had printed a piece of her work then used the houses repeatedly to collage and stitch the little scenes,adding in fabrics,text and snippets of other images.See the close up below.

She brought along the printable fabrics she likes to use .

She had also been playing with some of the stickers she had printed by Moo.com.

Highlighting areas with resin so that they can be made into little brooches.She is full of really clever ideas.

Another link to the coast was some wrapping fabric she picked up on holiday.The Japanese use it to wrap gifts,a tad longer lasting than paper!

A clever recipient can put it to further use ,as a basis for quilting perhaps.

Liz brought along the piece she almost lost in Cornwall.She decided to tie rusty items found on the beach into the fabric then tossed it into the surf........however she forgot to tie something to it so it wouldn't get washed away !

Luckily it was rescued ,but not without a soaking.

We liked the accent of blue meandering its way through.

Coast and rivers.

Viv was present this meeting and brought her sea piece.

She thought to put some hand stitching in the 'sand ' at the bottom but ripped it out as she disliked it.

We thought the marks left looked like seagull footprints left behind,unfortunately you can't see them in the photo !

She has more fabrics to continue with this theme.

 Sally has begun to turn her thoughts to creating pieces from her trip to the Antartic several years ago.

She has lots of inspiration,from photos ,drawings and memories.

Her chinstrap penguin drawings are so full of their character.

She also drew the wide open space of the glacier and has plans to create a panorama.

Barriers.

Jenn is working towards an exhibition with Sian Martin's masterclass group STA next August and has been looking at patterns within barriers and boundaries.She brought along some work where the embellisher has been used to mesh fibres and fabrics together.As yet they have no stitch,but they contain some of her indigo dyed fabrics from a few months back.

The patterns were hastily scribbled in various journeys in cars or on buses.They include wood ,wire and wrought ironwork.More still to come.

It's down !

We met on Tuesday after taking down Echoes on Sunday.We agreed that the space was amazing and really showed the work to its best.We had over 200 visitors while it was open,people stayed sometimes for a very long time poring over the work.We had great feedback about the exhibits,so although it was a lot of work for a relatively short space of time it was appreciated by the audience.It was lovely to see students from Sidcot taking an interest and sharing in the expertise on offer by members.

   Despite being caught up in the exhibition members brought along work to the meeting they had been developing.Deryll treated us to some delicious gooey home made chocolate cake as it was her birthday.We said we should have provided cake for her!

We start with her piece,based on Cumbrian landscape and using some of her naturally dyed fabrics.She uses a couronne stick to make the buttonhole rings.It was a dark rainy day so the photos haven't shown it to its best.

It's up!

We started on Thursday and continued into Friday to get the exhibition up and working to showcase everyone's talent. It looked like this

And we left on Thursday wondering how we would get it all to work together

But we gradually made sense of what would go where and now it looks like this.

Set on three floors there is lots to see.Here is a taster.

You'll have to be quick as it is only on for a short time.

 

We have a selection of items in the shop to give as gifts or treat yourself,fabrics and threads to inspire and original greetings cards.

All this and you can even have a sit down with a hot drink and a choice of home made cake.

We hope you can come along,we'd love to see you.