February meeting

Another dark and dismal day in Fallowfield was brightened by our first face-to-face meeting of 2026 and a busy day of workshop, stitching, quest speaker, chatting and, of course, tea, coffee and biscuits.

The morning started with a workshop, 'Bayeux with Bling', led by Sue. Very appropriate for a year that will see the Bayeux Tapestry being displayed in London.

Here are some of Sue's samples:

After a stitching demo from Sue and some discussion about the threads to use (and keeping them neat) everyone was soon able to complete the preparation of their fabric and start work. Filling area with Bayeux stitch can be quite slow at first, but once a rhythm is established its an easy stitch and has lots of possibilities for adaptation - which can make choosing threads time-consuming, if there are lots of options! The instruction had been to make a design with relatively small areas to stitch, so everyone felt they had made reasonable progress by the end of the two hours.

Our afternoon speaker was Elizabeth Almond, an accomplished embroiderer and designer, perhaps best known for her Blackwork teaching. Liz had visited us before for a workshop on Kogin embroidery, but a talk on 'Whitework for Today' gave us the opportunity to listen to an authoritative and knowledgeable speaker and have a close look at work from this prolific stitcher.

Liz talked about using various whitework techniques and stitches suitable for modern fabric and threads (and eyesight!), with a very useful emphasis on checking 'colour'-matching for both. 'Shades of White' applies to embroidery as well as paint!  As you would expect with such an enormous catalogue of work, Liz had brought with her lots of samples we could pass round, a large display of mounted work and lots of patterns to choose from. Here are a few photos of her amazing work.

Thank you, Liz, for an informative and interesting talk. 

More of Liz's work can be seen on her website and she is also on Facebook and Etsy.

https://blackworkjourney.co.uk/contents.html

January meeting update

Our first face-to-face meeting of 2026 took place at the beginning of February when some of us brought in work-in-progress from the January zoom meeting. Here are a few photos.

January meeting

The New Year started, as usual, with a happy Zoom meeting. Definitely too cold to travel this year, especially for those suffering from horrible coughs and colds.

Our challenge for this month was to cut six-inch squares from three different fabrics then cut each of these into 2 three-inch squares, 3 two-inch squares and 6 one-inch squares.

We had all chosen different combinations of fabrics, some all plain, others all patterned and some a mixture. It was then our task, should we choose to accept it, to layer the fabrics in a way that looked pleasing us then cut, stitch or patch them. And only four hours or so to play/faff and have lunch before we met up again in the afternoon to review progress.

An interesting exercise to get us started and a difficult one for those of us who struggle to be spontaneous! Thank you, Pam.

Hopefully, more photos next month after we meet in person. 

December meeting

It was a dark, dismal, December day outside ..... but inside there was chatter and laughter as members, and a couple of visitors, met for our Christmas stitching session.

This year we were led by Jean in creating Christmas tree decorations of Wild Women (angels, if we wanted to add wings). Here are Jean's samples:

After brief instructions and stitching tips, we were soon using the templates she'd provided (in 3 sizes/shapes!) to cut out our background fabric and sorting scraps to 'stitch & flip' to patch our creations. We could choose whether to do some hand-stitching over the joins and to add a face (a variety of expressions were also provided!). Whilst we were stitching, we also had to remember to vote in our two annual competitions.

After the raffle draw (with some excellent prizes this year) we enjoyed our Jacob's feast lunch that everyone had brought a contribution for.  

Most of us had intended to carry on stitching after lunch but a longer lunch break, clearing and cleaning up and the announcement of our competitions' winners meant that we finished slightly earlier than usual. Some did manage to (nearly) complete their projects, but others still had some way to go.

And the winners of our competitions were:

Nicole    The Kathleen Mason Award for Stitching (an amazing sampler)

Chris      The Anne Mullins Award for Design (a brilliant Gaudi-inspired lizard)

Thank you to everyone (you all contributed in some way!) and especially Jean, our tutor, and Pam, our Chair, who kept us on track throughout the day.

November meeting

In November, we welcomed Priscilla Edwards for a full-day workshop on the theme of 'Mixed Media Sculptural Birds & Flowers'. Priscilla had previously visited us in March 2024 for a talk about her work, so we were very enthused about learning her waxing technique. Here are some of the samples that she brought with her.

After telling us a little about her work, Priscilla gave several demos of manipulating wires to create bird and flower shapes with sufficient strength and stability to support the waxed fabric and any additional decoration we wanted to add. The lunch break saw us all with frameworks to start on the next stage in the afternoon.

During lunch, the wax pellets had been melting in the pots, so after more demos and discussions about types of wax pot (and H & S warnings!) we were able to start applying waxed fabric to our wire creations. Priscilla had been very generous in bringing scraps of fabric for us to use and, with scraps of our own, we had plenty to experiment with. 

By the end of the session we still had some work to do to fully complete our pieces by adding paint and stitching, but most had at least two started and we were all pleased with what we'd achieved. Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla's book, 'Sculptural Textile Art', published by Search Press in their The Textile Artist series is well worth reading as it contains detailed instructions for all her techniques.

More info about Priscilla, her work and courses can be found at:

https://www.priscillaedwards.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/artistpriscillaedwards

https://www.instagram.com/priscillafcedwards/

https://uk.pinterest.com/priscillafcedwards/priscilla-edwards/  (with lots of photos of work from the book).

October meeting

It was a dark and stormy day, the rain came down in torrents ....... 

There was no old man to tell us a tale but our morning was brighten by a visiting tutor, Angela Oswald, an amazing stitcher and teacher.  We enjoyed Angela's last visit to us for a Boro talk and workshop, but this time her theme was 'circles'. These were some of her samples and works in progress.

For additional inspiration, Angela also showed us photos of circle-based work from artists using a variety of different media.

After brief discussions about backgrounds and stitches, we all started on our individual pieces, whether they were small patches, woven backgrounds or larger pieces. As usual, Angela was generous with her time and supportive comments and ideas. We all made a good start but were nowhere near completing anything before our two hours were over.

Thank you, Angela, for a lovely workshop that will keep us stitching well into the winter!

Our afternoon speaker was Kirsteen McGregor, whose work as a pattern cutter in the children's clothing sector led her to a commitment to UK manufacturing and natural fibres. She spoke about 'Homegrown Homespun', a regenerative fashion project which aimed to re-introduce flax-growing and linen production, from its start in 2021 to this year. Kirsty told about the whole process from clearing the waste land in the centre of Blackburn (300 bags of rubbish!) to the processing of the final harvest in 2024, which had to be done in Poland as there are no commercial processors in the UK.

We watched a very informative video of the project and Kirsty gave us brief demos of how flax could be processed by hand (lots of time and good arm muscles), although the resulting fibres are too coarse for garments.  

Thank you, Kirsty, was a really interesting talk. There's lots of info and photos online. In particular:

https://northwestenglandfibreshed.org/homegrown-homespun/

https://superslowway.org.uk/projects/homegrown-homespun/

September meeting

After our summer break it was good to catch up at our September meeting.

The morning workshop for this meeting was a Screen Print Taster led by our member Lynda. Members thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to have a go at screen printing using a small homemade screen and fabric paint on different fabrics. Participants enthusiastically embraced the chance to play and experiment with different temporary stencils and masks, and to try layering prints and mixing colours.