The Hebden Bridge WI Rag Market!
It's on Saturday, 12 April 2025 from 10 am to 3.30 pm with three venues - The Waterfront at the Town Hall, Northlight studio and the Making Mill. It's always a great day out and a good mixture of traders, makers selling offcuts and surplus, and individuals having a stash clearout. There are plenty of places for coffee or lunch and it's easy to get to from Victoria Station in Manchester.
https://hebdenbridgewi.com/rag-market/
Megastitchers are in print! Have a look at the article about stitch groups in the new edition (April/May 2025) of Stitch magazine for information about our group, what we get up to at meetings and photos of some of our work.
Another cool, but sunny, March morning saw us making (loosely) Gaudi-inspired fragmented patterns using some of our stash of old transfers. Here are Sue's 'ones I prepared earlier' samples.
Clockwise from top left: 'repaired' with Italian quilting, repaired (much too symmetrically) with raised chain band, Kintsugi-inspired, random pottery shard display.
By the end of the two hours everyone had made a good start on their piece, hopefully, sufficiently inspired to complete at home. Unfortunately, the tutor's photography brain was absent during the workshop, but here's a completed, Kintsugi-inspired, piece that Gill posted on the Megastitchers Facebook page. Thank you, Gill, well-stitched!.
In the afternoon, we had a talk from our member, Lynda, about her recent trip to Japan, and in particular the textile culture of the Ainu people from the north, around Hokkaido, and recent attempts to re-vitalise it.
The Ainu had three styles of embroidery: that directly onto fabric, embroidery over strips of fabric that form 'roads' and embroidery applied over wider strips. There are different symbols in the patterns depending on where people live, but many of the patterns have been lost because of earlier attempts to wipe out culture and customs.
Lynda illustrated her talk with an interesting YouTube video, samples, leaflets and books, and items on which she had recreated some traditional patterns.
There are some good short You Tube videos about Ainu culture, including using bark and other natural materials to make clothing and household items, and links to museum collections.
M is for.......Manipulation and Melanie
Last Saturday was another lively and interesting day at Megastitchers, with short, taster, fabric manipulation sessions in the morning and a fabulous talk from Melanie Kay in the afternoon.
Here are a couple of samples from two of the tutors showing all the techniques we covered - Suffolk puffs/yo-yos, prairie points, stuffed puffs and furrowing.
Members who weren't taking part in the morning manipulations made progress with their own projects, or with samples started at previous workshops (well done to the crazy patchworkers!)
Melanie is a graduate of the University of Bolton, and in 2011 was selected to take part in the Embroiderers' Guild Showcase at the Knitting & Stitching Shows, where she was awarded the Textile Study Group Award. She also won first prize in the Bradford Design Competition and the Premier Vision award, with a trip to Paris.
Through her work, Melanie makes a thoughtful exploration of gender issues, including domestic violence and alcohol abuse. She cites Grayson Perry as an important inspiration, where a seemingly decorative piece of work, on closer inspection, has an underlying, significant social message.
Melanie told us about the various methods she had used for changing the surface of, and punching holes in, her original (and cheap) chosen 'fabric' - recycled beer cans - and how she embroidered them.
Research for her Masters subject - 'Can an artist or designer impact consumer behaviour'? - has led her to move away from metals into packaging, making large (three times the size) replicas of such things as match boxes and chocolate boxes. Here are some photos of the display tables.
It was a gentle introduction to 2025 with a well-attended Zoom presentation from Pam about designing a piece of work using Gaudi mosaics as inspiration.
Once we had decided the overall shape of our work, and its orientation, we were instructed to look at our preferred mosaic and identify broad swathes of colour, rather than looking at the individual pieces of tile. (Not all of us obeyed, see below!) The outlines of these areas could then be sketched onto paper or fabric. Six or seven areas of colour were deemed sufficient. If sketched on paper, they could be scanned into a computer and manipulated by elongating, squashing etc. before being copied onto fabric.
The choice of colour, or colours, and stitching was up to us, but, as always with Pam, there was another condition. We had to use a different weight of thread in each area of stitching, hence the limit of six or seven! White or cream thread was suggested for outlined to represent the mortar/cement.
Sue didn't quite comply with the instructions, but simply sketched out a small area of monochrome mosaic that had a variety of individual shapes and spacings between them. Threads used were 6-stranded - 1, 3, 5 and 6 strands -perle 8 and 12, perle 3 with no. 8 crochet yarn and a knitting yarn.
It was Robin Day! No, not the bowtie-wearing journalist and broadcaster but a day of making robins in various ways - decorations, Christmas tree ornaments and brooches. These are the examples made by Sue.
With lots of resources to choose from, members made a good start on their robins, before having a break for a very tasty 'Jacob's Feast' lunch and voting in our two competitions.
Then, it was back to some more stitching before the raffle was drawn and the competition winners were announced
Congratulations to Nicole (Kathleen Mason award for Stitching) and Christine H (Anne Mullins award for Design). Here's a section of Nicole's blackwork piece and the front cover of Chris's fabric book.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to stitchers everywhere!
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An inspiring full day workshop using die cutting machines was led by Jane Hadfield.
No, we didn't use the machines to cut out card or fabric shapes, we used them to make collagraph style prints using scraps of lace and braids and carbon paper. Who thought that carbon paper would make a comeback, and that it was available in such a variety of colours.
Jane was, of course, very well-prepared, presenting us with carbon paper, some card with which to create our print plate, a card envelope for passing through the machine. and a variety of ready-cut papers.
Here are some of the resources that Jane brought for use in making the print plates.
Here are some photos from the morning, unfortunately, it was a very dull day and lighting in our meeting venue was appalling, so nothing from the afternoon.
