Last Meeting Of Our Year

Last meeting of our year

June 15th 2017

We had another chance to see the bunting. It is effective from any view but certainly bears close inspection. The imagination and skills of our members are well displayed. This bunting can be added to at any time and maybe new members will choose to do so.

The inspiration is to work something that represents the month of your birth.

After the monthly business when we found out that the Cream tea had really boosted the coffers and heard that the NW Chair, Val Coleshaw, had been very complimentary about both the branch and the skill of its members, there was an open show and tell when members were invited to talk about their unfinished objects.

Hilary Small gave an amusing account of failing to finish her elephant book cover because of "missing" pieces. The piece at the back of the photo is a yet to be finished tree done in a workshop led by Pat Blincoe.

Looks good to me !

She also related the tale of a tapestry work which had ben given to her and which she was unable to work for a while until she visited the Quaker tapestry at Kendal

and learned what the Bayeux stitch is!

Daphne Abbott spoke of her frustration at losing her piece of fabric with a Nicola Jarvis design on. However she now has a design printed an a bag and ready to be worked---- so time for her to stitch!

Margaret Andrews showed us her unfinished heart shaped Hardanger, made to celebrate her diamond wedding. She asked for advice as to where to get the diamonds to finish her lovely work!

Joyce Bargh took a blackwork design of a man's face from a RSN book and confessed to being a bit stuck with the shading. 

Joyce also showed a partly finished silk shading cloth. She has worked two corners using three strands and now wished she had used two! She is wondering whether to work the other two corners with two strands and put the cloth over a table with the three strand corners to the wall! Clever idea!

Barbara Bauckham brought her very detailed cross stitch of a work room. She said that only by modifying the design and changing some of the contents could she get it completed.

As you can see there are hours of work in it.

I always admire the work on our members work table and i was particularly taken with Laura Brown's sea horse which I thought was quite lovely!

                                                

I'm only sorry my photo doesn't do it justice!

The Nicola Jarvis workshop is on Wed 5th July and a

the trip to Stoneyhurst college on the 6th July

Our day of stitch is to be a week early at St Andrew's church on Sat 29th July

There is a national theme of butterflies.

The Cream Tea

St Andrews church is such a lovely venue for our annual cream tea and often swell our coffers for the coming year ( no report yet on profits for this year)


Members pulled out the stops to make and serve scones and hot drinks, and man the stalls and  exhibitions.
























As  you can see the standard of members work was impressive, as ever

Among the other stall were the bric a brac stall, always popular, the hand made/home made stall, and a raffle .

Continuing the year 2017

February 

Although I have been lucky enough to listen to a talk by the textile artist Elizabeth Wall I was unable to attend the February meeting when she spoke to our guild. Judging from later comments she was as entertaining and inspiring as when I listened to her.meeting.

March

I was also absent from the March meeting when the two workshops were led by our own members Helen Jackson ( making delightful cards using hydrangea petals) and Barbara Fairhurst who taught the skill of ribbon embroidery.

April

Some Rochdale Members were to become familiar with Nicola Jarvis in April for she presented her interesting talk "The art of embroidery inspired by William and May Morris"

both to the branch and to the audience at Regional day to which over twenty of our members went. ( she is also to take our July day school)

The regional day was at Lancaster at the old St Martin's college, now the University of Cumbria. It was a great day with interesting speaker, some lovely exhibitions, a great raffle and Tombola, some good trade stalls and a lovely lunch in a dining room with an awesome view over Morecambe Bay and up to the lakes. 

Well done the Lancaster branch.

The icing on the cake that day was that Pat Blincoe won the Coats embroidery prize  with her lovely picture shown below.

May

The May  workshop was led by Marie Coulman

Everyone had enormous fun and displayed their creativity by making "Inchies" which had been painstakingly prepared by Marie.

.

Beginning the year 2016-2017

After a long break due to my travels and, more recently, injury, I am now able to restart the blog.
It has been an interesting and busy year with a great mixture of visitors for talks and workshops and the use of our own members to guide and inspire.

The AGM was accompanied by a talk by the ever popular Kathryn Thompson who showed her knowledge of the latest products available for the production of bags of many kinds.


Our own Bev Elliott showed off some of her mixed media work in October and we all looked at the first round of travelling books.





Nue or wool embroidery were the choices for the November day school.
and in November Bev followed up her October talk by leading a workshop using some materials like Tyvek and Lutrador which were not familiar to some members. Many members made bookmarks inspired by ones Bev had produced using transfer dyes


At the November meeting some members brought along their contributions for the Eternal landscape project run by the NW chair, Val Coleshaw.





We had great fun at the December meeting, led by Daphne Abbott,  assisted by Laura Brown
First of all we covered bottles with wool or felt and then decked then with twigs etc, provided
by Daphne.

There were some very interesting results










Barbara Bauckham led a Mixed Cross stitch workshop in January , which featured scarecrow pictures