Stitching in the Dales

A number of us joined the Grassington Branch for their annual 'Stitching in the Dales' workshop.  We spent two and a half days with Lynda Monk making a huge quantity of fabulous pieces.  We worked really hard and were exhausted at the end of each day but we came home with lots of wonderful ideas and plenty of work to finish off.  Thanks to Lynda for such a comprehensive workshop and thanks to Grassington Branch for arranging it all.  Also, a huge thank you to Rachel and her team for the wonderful lunches she provided.  Here are some of the things we made:

This was my panel with the stitching and the tyvek scrunched scrim attached all ready for the gesso to go on.  These next pieces are lutradur which has been stenciled with various pastes and gels and then painted.

Next we were using expandaprint onto lutradur through a themofax screen.  We finished some off with foil and some with embossing powders.  Some will go home plain to be painted.

Friday morning we were making flowers using the same technique as above.  They are so beautiful you don't need a vase to display them, they look good anywhere.

Ann's daughter may recognize these hands.

 Here is some of the finished work at the end of Friday afternoon.

Not to forget the ladies who were beavering away upstairs with Kate Stewart making these lovely landscapes using watercolour paint and organza.

A wonderful few days with lots of good food and good company.  Looking forward to next year.

April Meeting

Today we had a visit from Pauline Heyward who is the Regional Chair and she brought along the Guild Suitcase Collection.  This is a series of slides showing some of the items that the Guild has in it's collection.  It starts with some beautiful embroidered gloves and travels through time and styles to the present day.  There is a good range of items shown and it was interesting to see how embroidery styles have changed.  Those awful pieces you have in the loft that you made in the 1960's and 70's don't look so bad now.

We have decided to try and do something for National Stitch day and several of us are going to approach local libraries to see if we can sit and stitch there on the Saturday.  Hopefully we will get some attention although here it will be Yorkshire Day so all towns and villages will be very busy.

I didn't get any photographs this time as I forgot my camera as usual.  One or two people had finished their little books that they did with Christina last month and a few were still finishing off their stumpwork pieces that they had done with Alison.

Our bag for the Regional Day bag raffle has now been made and just requires filling with any items you can spare in the the colour range of apricot and also deep, bright pink.  Please bring any pieces to the May meeting.