Tuesday 3 March 2015

February Meeting

At last I have found a way to post photographs.  I have to open the blog via Google Chrome which is a longer way round but at least I get there.  I still can't do anything via Internet Explorer despite numerous messages to Blogger.  I think it is just another way to make you use Google products.

We had a very good meeting with 27 members and visitors there all day.  Lots of work seemed to be done except at my seat.  In the afternoon we had a 'Show and Tell' session.  We hadn't done one for a while and it was interesting to see what people have been doing.  It also gave some inspiration to some of our visitors.

We started with Christina who showed us her two pieces from an exhibition on 'Elements'.  She had looked at farming ancient and modern and produced one piece showing strip farming and done in hand embroidery on natural fabrics.  The second piece, pictured here, was on modern mass farming using modern techniques and fabrics.

The second speaker was Barbara who is also a member of York Branch and at their last meeting she had got hold of some Bernat Klien knitting wools.  This reminded her of a few years ago when she was doing her weaving degree at Bradford and she gave us a short talk on Bernat and his work.  These are some of the wools she has collected.

Our third speaker was Moira who had a a nasty accident with a washing machine and a jumper.  She showed us how she had used the shrunken garment(s) to make cushion covers and the one in the photograph was my favourite.  The back of the cushion is the back of the jumper.

After Moira came Colleen who described how when her father died she kept some of his shirts and sent out small pieces of them to a number of people, asking them to embroider something small on each piece.  As they all started to come back she made them into hexagons and stitched them all together to make a lovely memory quilt.
Colleen also told us about her button collection and how she was amazed at the price old buttons are sold at these days.

Ann brought us a wall hanging made from a beautiful tablecloth that her grandmother had embroidered.  She had never known her grandmother which made it all the more poignant.  She also brought a tablecloth embroidered by her mother and a tray cloth she had done herself when young.  Three generations of embroiderers.  This is her grandmother's cloth.
 And this is her mother's.

Christina had also brought her piece of work that gained her a 'Highly commended' in last years Guild competition.

This was a lovely piece of work that Ann was doing during the day.