Lecture - Emma Jackson Silversoles - November 7th

Emma Started her lecture by telling us about her early career in felting. She started Silver Soles in 2000 when her children were small. The name Silver Soles comes from the fact that her early career was in making felted baby bootees with silver leather soles. The name has continued although she rarely makes bootees now!

She then  did a lot of work teaching and working with young people and adults in the community and then in residencies in schools both with felting and mixed media. Felt appealed to all abilities. She also taught for 15 years at the MAC. 

Emma also undertook commissions including an altar frontal for St. Martins in the Bull Ring, Birmingham.

Her work which she sold at Trade Fairs and specialised Art Fairs included both fashion and interior design pieces. She as interested in textural surfaces, colour and included Shibori.

In 2015 having had a lot of problems with her back she thought she would have to give up felting and so she decided to undertake an MA in surface design and texture at BCU. She explored the touch of surfaces.

Emma's sketchbooks were the start of this process

She then started to create different surfaces, including adding latex onto a variety of fabrics.

The combination of these surfaces with devore velvet and nuno felting.

The fabrics she created ..............................

........ were used in interior designs including these wonderful lamps and cushions

How different the lamp shade looks when it is lit!!

Thank you Emma for a fascinating lecture and we look forward to a workshop with you when we are back to normal.

 

Lecture :Wool Magic by Raya Brown -  3rd October 2020

Raya's lecture showed her innovative use of Nuno felting

She has now developed her love of fleece into making wool paintings which she traps between glass. She gave us a demonstration of her technique. The fleece is teased into very small amounts with which she 'paints'.

Thank you Raya for sharing your work with us

 

Bargello talk by Gail Tutcher 5th September 2020

One of our members, Gail Tutcher gave us a very interesting talk on Bargello Embroidery .

She started by showing us historical examples of Bargello

Gail continued by showing us how to create the patterns

                                       

                                        

Gail used her knowledge of the techniques to create a four way Bargello design that she turned into the top of a pouffe

Finally she showed us ways in which designs can be taken from items we can see around us

Thank you Gail for a very interesting lecture

 

Chairs Challenge 2020  Theme of “20”

This challenge was set by Elise Stewart in her final year as Chair. These are the entries that would normally have been on display at the AGM!!

 

Saskia
It is what the year 2020 means/meant for me.   The background is from a textile that someone (possibly from the embroiderers guild) made into a uniform bag that I used when I was transferred to New Cross hospital for 2 months. The appliquéd flowers and letter C were from another uniform bag. The canvas work was from my kit from the embroiderers guild. The coronavirus was one of the textile artist.org challenges. The words on the ribbons all relate to the year. The calligraphy was done by my daughter and scanned onto dyed fabric. The stitching incorporates many of the try a stitch Tuesdays. The photos are of me and my family signifying our separation and use of zoom and the post to keep in touch. The stitched bird and flowers signify my enjoyment of the nature in my garden. And obviously (I hope) the red stitched circles are the virus.

 

 

 Judy enjoyed using the stitches from Try a Stitch Tuesday

Helen’s very “blingy” entry 

Margaret

Her entry was samples of rust and indigo that she tried for herself for the first time this year

Anne Holyhead made a china teapot set – China being the traditional gift for a 20 year wedding anniversary  

Maggie – 20 shades of blue.  A piece of her hand made felt with stitching on.

Six months of the strange new world!

 

What a strange six months it has been! The first part of lockdown we spent shutting down the Branch safely including cancelling all our arrangements for the Regional Day that was meant to happen in June.  Then we had to do some swift rearranging for 2022 (2021 being taken by Teme Valley) but we are now all set for 18^th June 2022 so put the date in your dairies!

 

At first we thought this situation would be over quickly but it would be nice to give members a little project in the meantime. We had been given a big bag of stitch kits (the kind you get on crossstitch magazines) so we posted a kit out to every member and challenged them to do come up with something.   Gill used the threads from hers to make a name tag with a space on the back to put her raffle ticket. Great idea as many of us misplace our raffle tickets.

 

As the weeks went on we realised we weren’t going to be able to meet for a while and we had better learn to get a bit more IT savvy. We set up a Facebook Page for Branch members only and encouraged everyone to post their stitching stories. Its been a great success with lots of chat, comments, suggestions and general textile content.  We have also been running “Try a Stitch Tuesday” for the past three months, where I post instructions on how to work an embroidery stitch and others try it out. There are little books being made and individual pieces as well. 

(Saskia’s vintage piece using Wheatear stitch)

 

Members have taken part in external projects as well. Many of us joined in with the Textile Artist challenges at the beginning of lockdown. They had some fabulous tutors. Margaret joined in the By You Tapesty as well as the Guild NHS project.  She made the lovely pieces shown below.

 

 

Our travelling books have also continued. Members have just been producing the work for now and we will have to sort it all out later on. The piece below was done by Gail for the theme “The book of Kells”

 

The committee started meeting again via Zoom. It took us a few goes to get our heads round how it all worked but we have got quite good at it now. Once we had an idea of how it worked we set up a Zoom social for all the members.  This was a Zoom chat where we divided people into breakout rooms so they could talk in small groups. It was so great to see and talk to people we hadn’t been in touch with for a few months.   This made us ambitious,  so for the next meeting we had a mini lecture from one of our members, Gail Tutcher, on the history of and her love for Bargello.  What a fascinating topic and she got a few of us itching to have a go. It was delightful to be able to do something embroidery related that felt almost normal.

(this is a piece of 4way bargello she made)

 

We have given a few members little Zoom lessons to allow them to get up and running with it but overall we have found it quite easy to use once a few of us had an idea.  We have been checking with the tutors we had to cancel and we now have an online programme coming together for the next few months. Sadly as a large branch we are going to be unable to meet together for some time to come but we are upbeat about our new programme and looking forward to lectures.

 

regards

Elise