February Meeting

This month we had a members day.  We are always cautious about February as quite often in the past we have had to cancel the meeting due to bad weather.  This year however, the weather was fine and most of the members were able to turn out.

Jackie and Ann had once again been busy preparing kits for us to work on.  Jackie had some lavender bags with transfers to copy onto the fabric and stitch in traditional embroidery stitches.  Meanwhile Ann had prepared pieces of canvas for us to work a small design based on the 'lace on canvas' technique.  These tiny pieces could then be made up into cards or other small objects.  It certainly kept us all busy and we had two visitors who also enjoyed their day.

Work towards the exhibition is moving on apace and we now have a good selection of bags for the tombola.

Jackie has also made a lovely bag for the regional day raffle and we just have to fill it now with lots of goodies that will tempt you all to buy raffle tickets on the day.


These are some of the bags for the tombola.

This is one of the 'lace on canvas' pieces belonging to Ann together with a sample of what the members made.

 These are Jackie's lavender sachets.

Here we all are busy working away.

A preview of something you will see at our exhibition on the 8th & 9th of April at Farndale.    These little birds were in Stitch magazine and we have all made one and everyone is different.  They look really good.

January 2016 meeting

Our membership has fallen this year by about 5 but we are hoping to have one or two newcomers next month.  Although a few people were missing this time for various reasons we still had a lively meeting.  The committee spent the morning planning the exhibition which will be on the 8th and 9th April at Farndale again.  We will be setting up on the Thursday at 6pm, quite late in the day but the room is in use prior to that.  Moira and Janet are going to make us some very stylish bunting to hang outside the venue.
The travelling journal is going really well with 4 pages already completed and on its way to the next one.
Several people have put their names down to complete work for the Capability Brown project so we should have a good representation there.

As usual I forgot my camera (even my new one that my daughter bought me for Christmas/birthday) and I missed getting some lovely shots of the speakers work.  Angela Cole gave an informative talk about willow and hazel and how her and her partner had set up business making garden items and fencing.  While giving this talk she also made a lovely wigwam for plants to climb up.  I purchased two of her flowers and have managed to photograph these at home.

These come with long hazel stalks so that you can stand them in your garden but I think I am going to attach mine to the garage wall which is a rather blank space.  Angela normally sells these through one of the florists in Malton.  I can't remember the name right now but if you are interested, contact me and I will find out for you.

October and November Meetings

Didn't get chance to complete the October meeting so I am catching up now.  We had an interesting talk by Christine Poole our ex chairman of the Guild.  She told us how she had started in embroidery and the people who had influenced her over the years.  There were lots of interesting pieces of work to look at and details about the inspiration for them.
Our November meeting was completely different.  Janet, one of our members is a great expert at Hardanger and she came today to give a short workshop in this technique.  Members who arrived in the morning couldn't wait until the afternoon to get started so they were under way by 11.30 and I had to clear them all out at 3.30 as they were still working and chatting.  As usual, I forgot to take my camera with me, however, here is a photograph of my finished piece.

I plan to incorporate it into another piece of work.  If I remember, I will upload the finished article when it gets done.

St. John's Church Exhibition

This weekend (10th & 11th October) we had a small exhibition in St. John's Church, East Ayton near Scarborough.  As a branch we had done some work repairing the altar frontal for the church and instead of paying the branch to do it, we asked if they would let us put a display of work in the church.  We came to an agreement on the date which happened to be their harvest festival and they managed to get the archdeacon to come and bless the altar at the same time.  It was an enjoyable weekend, with many local people calling in on the Saturday to leave donations and join us all for coffee.  On Sunday, 2 of the team of 4 who did the repair work, joined the service and the harvest lunch afterwards.  We received a lot of compliments for all the work on display as well as the altar frontal.  This report will hopefully go into Contact magazine as well as the Regional Yearbook to show another way in which branches can promote themselves and the Guild.

The work undertaken was on the top 4 bosses of the frontal where the worst wear had occured.  The gold was unravelling and the silk shading was disintegrating.  We managed to match the threads fairly well for the silk shading and we bought new gold thread for the centre of the bosses but we re-couched the outer goldwork.  The fringe was gently brushed and we felt it would unwind if we washed it.  The old linen top was removed and a new piece inserted.  The gold shines out now when the frontal is on the altar but we have advised the church that next time it will have to be replaced.  We felt that the bosses were probably re-used ones from a previous frontal as they seemed quite old.

This is what one of the bosses looked like before.  You can see the gold thread hanging off.

This is what they look like now.

The full altar frontal.

Here are some of the exhibits dotted around the church and on display in the vestry.

September Meeting

Our AGM today which was well attended again and what a good day we had.  After all the business we had a quiz with Angela Fawcett and I don't think I have ever attended such a jolly AGM anywhere.  We split into groups and the winners were Janet, Christina and Lindsay who all ended up with a lot of chocolate.

Today was also the day we judged our Rosebowl Competition and Angela did this for us.  A difficult job, choosing a winner from the nine entries.  The topic was Winter and the winner was Christina with her lovely jug.  Apparently, this was based on something she had seen in Stitch Magazine.  This is the second year running that Christina has won the bowl so she should have a place ready set aside for it!

Christina with her winning entry.

We have got a bit more information about the Capability Brown exhibition that will be at Scampston Hall next year and will be on all through the summer from May to September.
Our piece of work for the Regional AGM 'Chairman's Challenge' os almost complete and looks very nice.  It certainly complies with the request for something small and beautiful.

Woolfest

Visited the Woolfest on Saturday at York Auction Mart.  It was a very good day, lots of wool related stalls and the Guild stall was much admired.  I learnt a lot about sheep from a very entertaining gentleman who provided a talk and demonstration of sheering.  The layout wasn't brilliant as I think that on Friday a lot of people missed the end rows of stalls but some ingenuity and rehanging of the Guild bunting improved the situation for Saturday.  Thank you to everyone who provided items for our stall.

Summer School

Christina and I had a wonderful weekend at Bishop Burton, doing lots of work and meeting up with friends from other Branches.  We have all put on half a stone in weight with all the lovely food that was prepared for us.
There were four tutors, Nicola Hulme, Chris Gray, Jenny Adin-Christie and Linda Miller.  All the classes did lots of wonderful work and I have got some photographs below of what went on in our room.

Sorry no, this isn't a members fantastic work, it is two models that are in the grounds at Bishop Burton.  Still fantastic though.

The next pictures are from Chris Grays workshop which is where Christina and I were.  Known locally as 'The Messy Room'.  We were making three fold books to contain something that was of interest to us or had a special memory that we wanted to cherish.

 These next two are Chris's own books.

 This was one I missed earlier.

The other classes produced some wonderful work too.  Jenny Adin-Christie did goldwork which was absolutely beautiful, Nicola Hulme did stump work and Linda Miller did machine embroidery, creating pictures and views done in solid machine stitch.

A wonderful weekend and I can recommend it to anyone and very good value for money.