Felt to Stitch - Jackie Cardy October Meeting 2022

 Jackie Cardy arrived with armfuls of  beautifully coloured wool fibres and wonderfully felted and stitched felt pieces delightfully displayed to inspire us. [See below]

Jackie began the workshop by demonstrating how to make a piece of felt and then add fibres to the surface in a swirly fashion that could be used later for inspiring the stitching.

Members set about laying their fibres, adding swirly fibres and then applying warm water and soap. Friction was then applied by rubbing the wet fibres and finally rolling the fibres in the plastic,

 As the fibres began to felt we then rolled the felt in a bamboo blind.

When the felt was fully felted , it was rinsed and left to dry. Some wonderfully patterned pieces began to emerge.

 Jackie then collected all our pieces together and cast her artistic eye over them suggesting possible places to stitch and shapes that could be made to look like flowers or leaves by adding machine or hand stitching.

In the afternoon Jackie demonstrated making flowers by making half felts first and then cutting out the petal shapes and then felting them to the background.

This is her demonstration piece.

Members then started making half felts with  one colour one side and a different one the other so we had a choice of colours to use.

Jackie then demonstrated machine stitching the felt, looking for shapes that we wished to enhance and the kind of stitches to use.

I have enlarged 2 pieces of Jackie's work so you can see better how she has used the stitches.

Members had a very enjoyable day and went home armed with pieces of felt ready to be stitched into when dry.

A big thank you goes to Jackie for inspiring us and sharing her skills and creative input with our group.

Thank You Jackie.

Pill Pouch Joanna henson

 Joanna made a pattern at last month's meeting using her Secret Stash. She embroidered the pattern using parallel running stitch in bright colours.

Realizing that she needed a pouch for her pills she folded up the sides and stitched them making a pocket with a flap.

Thanks Joanna . What a good idea, pretty and useful as well!

Raffle Colour - Fungi 4th October 2022

 

6th September Meeting - AGM - followed by setting the programme Secret Stash- Fran Walker/ Machine Embroidery- Sandra Kendall

 We started our new Embroidery year with our AGM. This was our first proper AGM since we reformed the group a year ago.

Last year we started with £30 per head subs and over the year we have gradually built up our finances from the monthly raffle ,sales table and a table at a craft fair. Thanks to the hard work and support of everyone we are now on a better financial footing and we are able to have our first outside workshop in October.

We also have a new committee to support the group by the work they do behind the scenes and we are able to look forward to a brighter future.

Following the AGM we set the programme for the following year where many of our members have volunteered their skills to lead workshops. We are also going to run a skills based day with 4 different activities to try out across the day.

We then got down to the important part involving stitch!

Fran, one of our own members, had set up an activity called Secret Stash where members were given a small roll of fabrics with the task to make something with stitch in 2 hours.

A roll of fabrics

Members took only a few minutes to look at their fabric, come up with ideas and then you could hear snipping of scissors and see the pinning of pieces .

 There were some wonderful ideas and not one was the same.

After the pieces were set out and pinned stich was used to link the fabrics together.

After 2 hours most members were nearly finished and the range was extraordinary. It was a fun 2 hours and thanks go to Fran for introducing us to the idea.

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In a corner of the room 2 machines were set up to give more free machine practice to 2 of our members.

One practiced straight stitch and the other practiced zigzag and then she used straight stitch on a range of materials including sheers.

It was a very busy meeting but a lot was accomplished, the AGM, new committee, setting the following year's programme, Secret Stash, free machine embroidery.

A big thank you to everyone for helping to take part in the above activities and set up the programme for the next year.