Persian delights Nov 15th 2018

Persian delights

A talk by Hilary Naghashi

What an interesting talk we had today !

Hilary has been married to her Iranian husband for forty years and during that time she has amassed  a large collection of Persian textiles, some of which she brought along to illustrate her talk.
They ranged from sample of carpet through wall hangings, sheep head-dresses, bags to hold precious salt and containers to drape over the arm to hold seeds at sowing time.
 Some of these samples were antiques.


We were fascinated to hear that the carpets for which the region is renowned are often finished of by having buckets of soapy water thrown over them or being laid down on a road for vehicles to drive over thus locking the knots of the carpet into  place.

Hilary had some very interesting slides, some of them cataloguing the journey made by her and her family (In a 20year old car with no air conditioning) to some of the remote tribes of Iran) 
Some of her samples illustrated textiles created by the tribes people























We were shown a hanging which had been made from recycled 
clothes ( This is the blue and green coloured piece in the picture in the middle  the left)




She visited the city of Isfahan renowned for its bazaar with wonderful crafts being created
Two of these techniques are shown here.









Some of the tiles she saw inspired a piece she made for her City and Guilds award some years ago and it has been shown in stitch magazine

My first meeting this year

Thursday 18th October 2018

Great members work table today showing a variety of skills.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!!!

Our chairman had a lot of announcements to make today including the news that we are to visit the Altrincham branch in July 2019 and they will come here to Rochdale in October.

We were visited earlier this year by Parbold and look forward to visiting them in February

We heard that a few of our members are having health problems at the moment and we wish them all well.

The workshop today was taken by Kate Philbin and was entitled "Fragments of the past. Most of the pieces involved printing photos onto fabric. What a lvely way o reprsent old memories!!!

Here are some of the pieces in the making

We hope to see some of the finished articles on the members' work table.

Its great to be in the Rochdale Branch

Sadly, I missed Joyce Bargh's talk on Chinese Embroidery  in November

In December Laura Brown had prepared kits for felt Christmas tree decorations

Just look at the things on the members work table
All stunning!!




Lindsey said these had taken months to bead I'm not surprised!!! You can see the details on one of them but they were all stunning!!

Smocked Christmas baubles done by Hilary Wilson

Anne Whalley"s beautiful Christmas tree

2018

It is great to belong to a branch like Rochdale and be able to enjoy so many aspects of textile art with like-minded people.
Our speaker in January was Liz Almond who is well know for many things but mainly her skills with blackwork. I was personally astounded when listening to her and hearing her accounts of her work and way of life. I was not surprised to hear that she is a lady who does not need a lot of sleep.

This is a part of the display of work she brought with her. If you look carefully you will see that some of the designs are conventional while others, like the shoes, are more individual and modern looking.

The sheer size of some of the pieces of work was awesome!!


Liz is generous with her advice and skills and her on-line business has many ideas for work.
Whilst she was with us she told us of her forthcoming trip to the third world to fly the flag of needle art there


Some of our members Brought along their work too
Two of them were inspired another another textile artist who has visited us, Nicola Jarvis

Liz's talk was called "Carry on Stitching"
With such as her to inspire it is a message that will be heard.


Bev Elliott lead the workshop "Encrusted stitch" In February
These are the starts made by some

 



















Hope to see some of the finished projects on the members work table later

These were on it in February

 

March

We had a great time in March!
Visitors from Parbold ( Our NW chairman Sue Chisnall-Sumner and Tracey Ramsey) brought along work from the exhibition that Parbold mounted in Southport



Our own members staged a mini exhibition with examples of their work, too numerous to be shown here
but then ....
We had Afternoon tea!!!

 I wouldn't mind if it became a habit!