The day that we went to Parbold
Following a visit, last year, of two members of the Parbold branch who gave
us a talk about some pieces from their recent exhibition, on Sat 9th February 2019 eight members of the Rochdale branch made the journey to Parbold to return the favour.
We had decided to take some examples of collaborate pieces of work.
We were welcomed by Nicky , their chairman
After that, Bev spoke about our forthcoming exhibition at the Littleborough coach house.
The exhibition will run from April 6th to May 5th
All are welcome!
Marie was the first from Rochdale to speak.
She spoke about the pride and joy of the branch ........ The branch banner. Marie explained that photographs were taken in and around Rochdale town hall and the volunteers from the branch were asked to do a piece of needlework inspired by one of the pictures.
Marie went on to explain that decisions had to be made about joining the pieces together.
The banner is put up for all our branch meetings and there is a file which explains about the processes in creating the banner.
Next up was Barbara, our chair. She spoke about the cloth that was made form "scribble" embroideries. At a branch workshop Barbara presented the idea of creating a piece of work from some examples of scribbles (or taking a pencil for a walk). People were asked to stick to a colour scheme and plan which stitches were to where. It was just amazing to see the colourful and varied results and at each of the meetings the cloth graces the members' work table.
When we celebrated our twentieth anniversary, four years ago, it was decided to do a collaborative piece to commemorate it. There was quite a lot of discussion and people remembered about doing the rainbow squares some years ago. There were decisions to be made about colour and it was decided to make a list of different embroidery techniques and people could sign their name alongside one of them.The colour scheme of red with any metallic additions to be gold.
Jan spoke about this and here you see her standing beside the finished banner.
She also explains that the frame was adapted from an old frame which she had in the attic and also how the inspiration for how to join the pieces came from an Australian magazine.
The last thing that we had taken was our bunting which we had draped around the hall. You can see it in these pictures (The bunting is broken down into three pieces to make it easier to manage and to hung in smaller lengths)
I spoke about the Bunting
It was an idea by our previous chair, Hilary, following a conversation I had with her about doing a similar project with a small group I belong to. She decided to ask us all to do our own pennant, in any media we chose, based on something inspired by the month of our birth. What an amazing set of results we got and were all amazed by the things that resulted.
As a branch we are very proud of these pieces and they are now a part of the life of the branch
We were extremely well rewarded for making the visit
by an excellent afternoon tea kindly donated by their members. Thank you so much
.
