Skill sharing session

Today's skills sharing session produced some Christmas decorations and Indian inspired bags. These red tree decorations use simple running stitches as used in Kantha embroidery.  Carol Condliffe provided members with written instructions, red linen weave fabric and some wadding. Five members took on the challenge and here are 3 of the half finished along with Carol's example.

Meanwhile on the other table Chris Harris was introducing an Indian mini bag as featured in a Stitches issue from 2010.

Everyone who took part made a good start but took them home to finish off.

Nikki Parmenter

Nikki Parmenter gave us a very interesting talk about the way she up cycles such a wide range of items in her art work.

-

This peacock was the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Silk Museum, Macclesfield.

CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATIONS

A selection of our hand embroidered Christmas tree decorations displayed at St George's Church, Heaviley Stockport.

Maria Walker From Rags to Riches

Maria gave us a very entertaining account of the history of her textile art practice from the early days of City and Guilds through to her finishing a MA at Chester.

Her chance discovery of a bundle of letter from the 1930s led her to develop a body of work called the Lightfoot Letters on which she collaborated with a poet whose family life was chronicled in these letters. This exhibition is now on tour and currently at Salford Art Gallery. Well worth a visit. 

Maria bought a full range of samples of her work and was more than happy for us to handle them.

AGM news

Our AGM this month was full of national, regional and branch news.

It was followed by a talk from Ann Ford entitled 'Cutting Edge'. Ann was fascinated by the wooden edging to the roofs of small local railway stations in Cornwall. She sketched them and at a later date used them as design elements for her work.

But the exciting news is that we voted in favour of changing our day to day name to 'Silk Town Stitchers'. This came about after our successful day standing at the local monthly market in Macclesfield in July as part of National stitch Day and the comments from visitors to our stall.  It is a more inclusive name and should dispel any elitist notion that the word Guild implies.

Here we are in the height of summer !!! Left to right, Margaret, Maggie, Ann, Jackie and Ann.


Despite the rather wet weather we stoically sat and stitches even though our fingers were like ice.

Folio Study Day

Here are two of the interesting pieces of embroidery from the Guilds vast collection. In March we had the opportunity to study these wide ranging examples in detail taking photos and making sketches so that we can interpret the designs, colours or shapes in our own style. These will then  be part of the June meeting when they will be on show to all members and a vote will be made.

 

 

 

 

 In May we had a study day when members came and worked on their designs along with any on going work they were involved in.

 

There was a wide range of work going on and a far amount of chat as well!!!!

OCTOBER 2014 Lorna Knight

What a delight this re scheduled talk turned out to be. Dorothy our programme secretary pulled out all the stops with only a week to find a new speaker after the speaker for October had to pull out at the last minute. 

Lorna enthralled us with her life journey within the textile world from a degree followed by teaching in a middle school to working for Terry Fox and finally taking the big step to opening her Sewing Academy. 

She shared some of the secrets of the haute couture world and with a full range of examples gave us tips galore on how to improve our sewing results so that home made doesn't look home made.

Lorna also teaches a full range of workshops at Bambers Eccles

This is the tweed jacket that Lorna was whisked over to the States to make a video for Craftsy, the online workshop website.  It was extremely light as it only had two layers. The tweed right side and the silk lining, these were then quilted together. 

Lorna brought along some of the books that she has had published and she explained the process involved in getting a book published from the initial concept to the final layout.