Do you remember the past December stitching at Megastitchers?
This isn't everything - some have found homes elsewhere and some, sadly/shamefully, are still to be completed.
Hope all stitchers have an enjoyable and peaceful Christmas. Perhaps a time to address the PHD and UFO piles!
⛄⛄⛄ 🎄🎄🎄 🎅🎅🎅 🎄🎄🎄⛄⛄⛄
With best wishes for the New Year
🔔🔔🔔 ✨✨✨ 🎆 ✨✨✨ 🔔🔔🔔
Whitworth Art Gallery
University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester, M15 6ER
Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 am to 5.00 pm (9.00 pm on Thursdays)
Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery (to 7 April 2024)
Historical dresses, contemporary work and film of women explaining how, why and where they stitch. Inspiring and moving.
Traces of Displacement (to May 2024)
Work addressing one of the major humanitarian crises of our time - forced displacement.
As always, lots of interesting items in the shop, and lovely food in the cafe.
Nantwich Museum
29 Pillory St, Nantwich, CW5 5BD
Open: Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00 am to 4.00 pm
Within the Loop (to 17 February 2024)
An exhibition of work by Threadmill Textile Artists that reflects Nantwich's rich social and industrial history.
Nantwich has an interesting history and is a great place to wander round, with lots of places to eat.
Fabric and ribbon and bling, what more could one want for a December meeting?
We were soon hard at work, only distracted by a very sweet (!) quiz and our gossiping. There were real embroiderers amongst us, but some settled for couching/stitching on as much ribbon and bling as possible.
Another quiz, this time with an embroidery focus, the opportunity to vote for our favourite pieces of work in our annual competition and a raffle kept us busy for the rest of the afternoon.
Congratulations to Rachel and Janet, who were the winners in the competitions.
By the end of the day, most people had started on two Christmas trees and some had attached them to fabric and mounted them on CDs, to be sewn back-to-back, ready to hang when we returned home.
The final, or nearly final, pieces can be seen below.
Thank you to Anne for a good stitching session, to the two quiz-setters and to everyone who participated.
Our morning workshop, led by Pam, was inspired by the Gawthorpe Textiles collection, following the September presentation by Rachel Midgley, curator. The Gawthorpe collection ranges from an embroidered herb pillow circa 1580’s with spangles and metallic lace on linen, to canvas work, silk work, and lavishly embroidered skirts and tablecloths from 1900’s.
Pam had prepared fabrics, templates, examples, ideas for stitches to use and embroidery resource books. Sue’s example was a paisley pattern on finer dress material.
Burden, Brick, Couching, Darning, Detached buttonhole stitch
Forbidden stitch, French knots, Outline stitch, Pekinese stitch
Running, Satin, Stem, Silk shading and Tent stitch.
The Anchor book of Crewel Stitches was very helpful. Crewelwork developed in the 1600’s. Wall hangings, clothes and household items were decorated with exotic plants, animals and fruits, using brightly coloured wools and a range of stitches on linen or wool fabrics. Now cotton and silk threads are often used, with a Crewel needle. Shapes are outlined first in chain, stem stitch or couching and follow the design outline, ignoring the material’s weave. Then the design area is filled with different laid stitches. Very exciting and colourful. And it's also possible to add previously-made motifs, such as Petra's Suffolk puff.
In the afternoon Lynda gave a presentation - The Alchemy of Design - on her journey to becoming a textile artist. Winding down to retirement, having started work at 16, she found courage to enrol in a Stockport college foundation year and she did a taster week with each discipline. Week 4 was an instruction to play, with white cartridge paper – for her a light bulb moment that fired her creativity. She thought about Sense of Place, made a plan, a mind map, played with photos, gelli plate prints (Lynda says you can never have too many of these!), rubbings, collages, and experimented with how to produce ideas on fabric.
Fuelled by a continuing desire to learn and develop her practice, Lynda attended at a wide range of workshops, including some on-line, made a hexagon meander book, added words, layers, and lattices - all leading led to the making of more complex pieces.
Only two more days to buy your ticket for this local show as ticket sales end on 28th October. Go to https://greatnortherntextileshow.com for booking via Eventbrite. Tickets are £7.50, with timed entry.
Lots to see, including demos (Pam is on the IFA stand), and, of course, it's a great retail opportunity whether you sew, knit/crochet, quilt, felt or dye.
The venue is BeActive Urmston (formerly the George Carnall Community Hub), Manchester, M41 7FJ.
STRETFORD COMMUNITY DYE GARDEN is launching a new project, in partnership with Friends of Victoria Park Stretford. Thanks to RHS funding, they are working to create a dye garden in Victoria Park. There'll be workshops on natural dyeing and other resources, with lots of opportunities to learn and volunteer. If you've got green fingers, are interested in natural dyeing or growing, or keen to learn, find out more and complete their survey below to register your interest.
Nicole led a fun, friendly and fiddly workshop at our October meeting making small beaded danglies/decorations. She saved us the trouble of sorting through our own stuff by bringing packs with all the requirements - although we did have the problem of colour choice, whether it was autumnal, festive (for those of us who like to be prepared!) or traditional. Thanks you, Nicole. Here are some of the completed pieces.
It's not often that there's an opportunity to see two great textile exhibitions in such close proximity!
Stitchlines - Exploration and Transformation (until 11 November)
Textiles and mixed media work exploring different techniques that transform surfaces.
Foxlowe Arts Centre, Stockwell St, Leek Tel: 01538 386112
Exhibition in The Gallery on the first floor (stairs, no lift), excellent cafe on the ground floor.
Open Wednesday to Saturday 10am to 4pm
Threadmill - Kaleidoscope (until 4 November)
An exploration of colour, texture and pattern developed from the Arts & Crafts Movement and The Leek Embroidery Society
Nicholson Institute, Stockwell St, Leek Tel: 01538 395530
Exhibition on the first floor (stairs & lift), with museum (includes work of the Leek Embroidery Society) and Tourist Information. Library on the ground floor.
Open Monday to Saturday 10am to 4pm
Welcome to the new year at Megastitchers!
We started our 2023-24. season with a relaxing Zentangle session led by Jean and Maureen. Or relaxing if you felt confident in drawing a few wiggly lines, for other it was easier to take inspiration from a design from our continuing artist of the year,Clarice Cliff.
Once outlines were completed we would be able to fill selected areas with colour, using stitches of our choice. Still a long way to go after a short session to match the samples provided by our tutors!
And, there was also a small Gawthorpe retail opportunity to round off the day!
Many thanks to everyone involved for an excellent start to our year.
July Meeting - Snakes!
The morning started with a talk from Angela about her favourite animal - SNAKES (although she does like other reptiles, as well) - and their place in history, religion, culture, art and medicine. Angela's early interest in reptiles, and photography, was clearly demonstrated in her presentation and her enthusiasm continues to this day where she has used them as inspiration for her BA. We admired lovely printed fabrics Angela had designed, along with some snakeskins, and were able to look at some sketchbooks she had produced as part of her degree work.
After the AGM and lunch, the workshop started with Angela showing us the stitched snake she has produced some time ago, the first piece she had designed.
The June workshop with Julia Wright was a great one for those interested in creating textural textiles.
Combined with some group and one-to-one teaching, plus excellent written, drawn and photographed instructions we soon got to work on our own pieces. And, of course this had to include some attempts at wonky knitting.
A really enjoyable day with lots of techniques to include in our work in the future. Thank you, Julia.
On Saturday, we will hold a short AGM. Angela will give a talk in the morning and run a workshop in the afternoon.
Timings:-
10.45 - 11.45. Angela Talk
11.45-12.15. AGM
12.15 - 12.45. Lunch
12.45 - 2.45. Angela’s Workshop “Snakes 3 ways”
June newsletter will follow - when I return from holiday 🔆
The Embroiderers' Guild (yes it's still going!) will hold their annual general meeting, online, on 15 July. The meeting is free to members and will be followed by an afternoon workshop (also free to members) given by Anne Kelly.
The chair has sent the May Newsletter. You can read it HERE. You will find updates on forthcoming meetings and events
You still have a few days to visit the Didsbury Parsonage and enjoy the beautiful embroideries of
Emma Pannel. Well worth the trip.
We had a good time at the Manchester Antique Textile Fair on 23 April. Lots of visitors to the stand who enjoyed seeing the wide range of our work, especially the January zoom challenges and the 'inspired by artists' pieces. Definitely worth attending again next year, and a good opportunity to view the work of the Textile Society bursary students. Here are some photos.
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The workshop this month was inspired by the pottery designs of Clarice Cliff. Lots of excellent colour ideas, as you can see.
You can see the March newsletter HERE. There is information about the meeting on 1 April and detail of upcoming events.
The Whitworth Art Gallery offers short tours (2pm -2.45pm) from Tuesday to Sunday. No need to book, you can just walk in. There is a limit of 20 people and the tour is designed to suit any need or ability.
On Saturday 18 March, Amy Burt will talk about her journey from Disco to the RSN. You can find ticket information HERE
The Meeting on 4 March featured Linda leading the group to explore book covers. Lovely work.
The Williamson Gallery in Birkenhead is hosting an exhibition highlighting the influence of Lace on the work of Michael Brennand-Wood. The exhibition is entitled "The Encirclement of Space".
There is still time to visit the vibrant and colourful exhibition of design and artefacts by Althea McNish at the Whitworth. Click HERE for more details.
The January zoom meeting presented members with a challenge. Members were asked to use a "warm" colourway and a "cool" and to use a two inch template of any geometric shape. This was to be randomly dropped onto a square of fabric 6x6 inches.
For Sue and I, it is obviously a case of 'great minds think alike' as we independently used a small triangle and chose turquoise and orange as our base colours! Here are the results:-
SUE
RUSSELL
Lots of people told me to go down to the Parsonage to see the new exhibition. They were not wrong, the exhibition is excellent. Here are some of the pieces on display
