Fish.

At the meeting Debby had been busy preparing Valentine's Day brooches for sale.She had had lots of sales in the new collective in Westbury on Trym 'We Make Bristol'we're sure these flew out of the door too.

She had been working with a variety of media to produce these .I think the above was tissue and stitch.The one below used a gelil plate

and this was one of her lovely batiks put through a printer onto  canvas.

If you visited the Bristol  Embroiderers Guild exhibition a few weekends back you would have seen Debby's goldfish in a bowl with weed.She likes to work with fish and birds.She has chosen a sculpture by Neil Dalrymple from the NiA collection to use as her inspiration for our upcoming exhibition there.

It turns out that he is the father of Ellie Dalrymple,a student who Debby mentored for her" A" levels.What a small world it is. 

Spots and dots.

Deryll had been having some fun with paper.She had painted some watercolour paper and had found some crackle glaze medium,then set to with a hole punch,scissors and her flower stitcher foot .

This is what she created,aren't they effective? Sometimes just the simplest shapes make for interesting arrangements.

Continuing with the dotty theme,Jenn had also been using a flower stitcher foot.

She is continuing to explore ways to interpret the NiA pot.These above were stitched on stiff cotton organdie,some were hand cut.

She also did some free machining on scrim backed with hand made paper ,the green sample on the bottom left.The top left is free machining on dissolvable backed with organza,detail below.The other coloured pieces are some procion dyed fabrics ,attempting a dotty surface.More sampling and thinking yet to come.

Skies and shore.

Viv brought along her "displacement"piece.Why this you may ask?the weather is too unsettled at the moment for her to begin her piece for NiA.if you remember she is intending using discharge on velvet and it is pretty smelly and toxic so she is waiting for a time when she can do it outside.

So...... this piece .She took inspiration from the photograph you see lower down.

The colours were the inspiration and she has been recycling fabrics.

Ira meanwhile has been to Scotland to have a break and while there she had a tutorial about her course Advanced Higher .

She has to produce three A1 collages by May!

So she too has been working on other things. Here you see painted backgrounds inspired by shorelines.Done on the seemingly endless supply of fabric left over from making her daughter's wedding dress.

We have no doubt she will meet all her deadlines.

Common denominator.

Jane has drawn out the quirky little birds from the Nature In Art plate and has been trying them out on her embroidery machine.

She has used shiny rayon thread as well as matt,and some raised wool.The one on the far left uses textural stitches.We loved the individual birds.

She has included some on a background of Celtic like motifs,trying different orientations as well as different threads and colours.We think she has made an excellent beginning but as with everything Jane does there is much ,much more to come.

Sally has chosen the same plate and had been doing some research .She thinks the plate ,originally from Persia ,is pre-Islamic and maybe from the Zoroastrian religion because of the use of animal images.She is thinking of maybe using broken clay pots and mounting embroidered cloth pieces over.You can see a tryout to the right of the plate.

Jane believes the shapes above are calligraphic symbols but Sally is convinced they are stylised figures.

Sally has been reproducing them on loose weave fabrics,

free machine drawing them.

She also brought along another complete assemblage .

Can you see the little bird?

It is actually an animal vertebrae!

February

Sue has been using her glorious colour to add to her embellished piece.

She has laid in some interestingly textured yarns and added in hand stitching.

Where she has used the embellisher the fabric has been distorted and created 'humps".She had also put the piece in the washing machine at 40*to see if areas would shrink and how this might affect areas of the piece.

We thought she could emphasise this characteristic and pad the underside.

This little piece had had threads and some cutouts from lace embellished to the surface.It would make a very sweet and useful bag.

West Country Quilt and Textile Show 2017

Here are a couple of pictures taken of the GTA stand and exhibition at the West Country Quilt and Textile Show in November

Maria Stewart.

This is the pot by Maria Stewart chosen by Jenn.

She has been experimenting very loosely with applying paint to paper and fabrics in the style of the artist

This fabric  fragment above uses the "crashing "technique.Layer of fabric,bondaweb without its paper,solufleece,then free machine stitch before hovering an iron over it.The fabric shrinks and bubbles.

Early days as to where and to what this might lead.