Lizzie Wall - Feathers, Scales and Fur

We had an amazing talk from Lizzie on her art quilts based on the natural world and including animals - fur, birds - feathers and fish - scales.

Lizzie trained in Manchester in fashion and embroidery and then became a primary school teacher and now specialises in helping children with educational needs.

She uses a lot of the countryside around Oswestry, where she lives and even when starting with the same subject, each has a different outcome.

This peacock is on a kimono silk & Obi and was exhibited at Harrogate. Other birds include owls, chickens, blackbirds to name but a few.

Hares, rabbits and hedgehogs form her 'fur' quilts.

As well as sunflowers and a special Oak tree from Calderstones park, near where Lizzie lived at one time.

She also has taken on commissions, particularly for churches in the form of altar frontals and chasubles. This one was based on the Lady of Walsingham.

Lizzie loves using fish - scales in her work - her cushion won her first prize at a quilt exhibition.

Lizzie's talk was very inspiring, as well as entertaining, with a lot of background information for her inspiration and techniques.

We very much look forward to her workshop next year, which may be based on hares, fishes, sunflowers, etc....

 

October 21st  Hand embroidery Experiment, Expand and Explore Alison Parkes

Alison started the day by showing how we could use our source material to make a background on either cotton or felt and then using a felting tool or the machine we could start to build it up.

Here are some of Alison’s backgrounds

She then asked us to look at our threads and decide between different weights to create a colour palette

Once we had done that she showed how using a variety of stitches that we could build upon the felted background. Using just one stitch eg French knots

 

Or Blanket stitch

in different weights of threads can build up an interesting surface.

Here are some of us working during the day

And then what we had achieved by the end of the day

Thank you Alison for a lovely relaxing day

 August 19th - Miniature Landscapes with Linda Bell

A large number of our members spent a lovely day yesterday making miniature landscapes with added wooden houses. The day was led by one of our members , Linda Bell. Thank you Linda

Here are some of our finished and work in progress masterpieces.

 July 15th Print, stitch and a pasta machine - Lindsay Fellows

We spent a very pleasant day yesterday, preparing backgrounds, making a printing 'plate' and then printing. Unfortunately we didn't get time to stitch but that will be our homework.

Using the starting point of the four seasons we prepared backgrounds which were sandwiched between two pieces of Bondaweb. This actually took longer than we thought, choosing the strips of fabric and then creating four landscape backgrounds.

Lindsay then showed us how to prepare our printing plates. We drew our design on to the inside of a Tetra pack , this was then etched using a bradawl . Ink was then rubbed into the surface and we ran a test on a piece of cotton fabric . A sandwich of fleece fabric, cotton , the printing plate and another piece of fleece were pinned together and put through a pasta making machine. It was quite a work out !!!!

 

When we were satisfied with our prints we then went on to printing on to our backgrounds. Here are some of the results

Lindsay finally showed us how to embelish our printed pieces, with snippets of fabrics and threads before finally adding the piece to a background before stitching  Here are a couple of Lindsay's pieces that she is working on.

  

Thank you Lindsay for a lovely day. We had better get stitching !!!

 

 Anne Brooke - Vintage Postcards

We had a fantastic lecture from this well-known embroiderer, who has become an internet sensation with her Sew4Soul, 52 Tags, 52 Flags and her Wobble Gobs. she is known globally and is one of the loveliest people you could meet.

Anne talked about her life as a teacher, and how she got into blogging on YouTube and Kofi.

We then had a brilliant day sewing Vintage Postcards, as seen above.

Anne provided the postcards, all collected over the years, and we set to making our own tutored by Anne in a funny, engaging, informative and brilliantly taught way!

nothing was too much trouble and Anne had provided many items to help us achieve great results.

These were the two Anne finished in the day as she showed us the processes and we all finished with a wonderful postcard as a fabulous reminder of a most successful day.

If you want to find out more about Anne and her wonderful projects, look her up, you will not be disappointed.