Angie Parker - Colour and Weave

This month we had a lecture from Angie (of Angie Parker Textiles) on Colour and Weave.

I have to say a massive well done to Angie - we had a huge technology failure and she managed to deliver a brilliant talk without any slides (which also had her prompts on).

Angie is a rug weaver who comes from a creative family (her mum knits, makes clothes etc)  and her art teacher encouraged Angie in her flair for textiles.  She was taught by the master weaver Susan Foster and in her first show won an award for new designers.  For quite a few years after graduation Angie worked in costume design in order to earn a living.

Here you can see a few of Angies samples - they were so soft to the touch and just beautiful. I dont know how anyone could bear to use them as rugs.

 Angie has lived in India for a while and you can see how much the colours inspired her. She told us that they "get under your skin" (quite literally then there is a festival!)

 These are some of the small sample pieces  - she often does scaled back pieces to try out ideas from  her sketchbook. Angie stressed the importance of having a sketchbook - she will never run out of ideas as there is always more to go back to. 

These smaller pieces are often made up of all sorts of threads not often used in weaving - some had glitter running through them but I am not sure you can see it on the photos.

 This is a sample inspired by Kaffe Fassett made in 1992. She took on board his motto - "if you dont know what colour to add, add another 6"

A lot of the yarns in this rug are made from PET - the plastic that comes from recycled bottles. These rugs are contracted from someone else as Angie doesnt have the specialist equipment needed to make them.  In taking the decision to make such a huge investment Angie asked herself "what is the worst that can happen?" Often it helps you put big decisions into perspective.

This book cover is made from a printed fabric copy of one of Angies weavings. It was so good it looked like a woven piece.  Angie uses collaborations to keep her creative energy going and thought our Branch was a wonderful way to allow us to share ideas, techniques and encouragement.

If you want to see more of Angies work the pictures she was going to show are on her Instagram account. 
Instagram account : angieparkertextiles   Look out for the socks!

English paper piecing - Kate Aimson

 A lovely start to the year - the January lecture was all about English Paper Piecing.

Kate’s first foray into patchwork was as a teenager in the late 1970s. She started to create a large bed cover from scraps of fabric given to her by family members and finally finished it in 2000. As someone who hates to read instructions, she worked out how to do paper piecing from a picture but didn’t realise that the tacking stitches were supposed to go through the paper as well as the fabric. After some trial and error, she created her own method that uses larger seam allowances and retains the tacking. 

Since her teenage beginnings, Kate has learned to experiment with motifs, colours and techniques. She lives in Buxton which is too remote to allow her to attend any formal classes, but she has been disciplined in keeping notes about her ideas. She collects patterns and keeps them in a book with her design ideas and charts. She also maintains a colour diary to show the selection of colours used in each piece of work. Her early work was based on a small number of colours, but she plays games with herself to train her mind to handle larger numbers of colours and is now more adventurous in her colour combinations. She made a deliberate decision not to learn colour theory because she felt it would distract her. Finally, she also creates collage books. These are made from books that contain photographs or images that she likes. She then collects and pastes complementary images from magazines, greetings cards, etc on each page to hide all of the text. The example she showed us was created using a Kaffe Fassett book on interior design. Many of us thought this this was a wonderful idea that we would like to emulate.

Kate has found that there are certain aspects of her work that are fixed: using all cotton fabrics, working in hexagons (now only small ones), hand cutting and stitching, paper piecing with large seam allowances, leaving in the tacking. From this base she then experiments with holes, different ways of combining patterns, joining hexagons with ties, stitched text to embellish her work, reversing her work to show the seams and stitches applique on the reverse, leaving in some coloured papers. Although some of her favourite colours are blues with lime green and Victorian hues, she is also influenced by “abrash” which is the natural variation that comes from working with fabric or threads that have been dyed in different batches, for example in different shades of cream.

Her work is sometimes designed on the go and sometimes planned on isometric paper. She has played with converting Fair Isle knitting charts into designs on the isometric sheets. The result is designs that include holes. She also likes to take her work out into nature and photograph it in a natural setting. One piece of work, “Mermaid’s Pool”, was shipped from Buxton to Tristan da Cunha for her to photograph! She visited this very remote island with her husband on a construction project. During the trip she worked with local children on creating designs. She recorded the whole expedition experience in an 8 metre piece of work that became known as “The Toilet Roll”

This year she says she is going to be working in whites, black and white and combinations with book text and is now preparing for her next expedition which is to the Falkland Islands.

(words and photo supplied by Gail T - thanks) 

The textiles of Bangladesh

Another of our members - Ruth Tykiff - gave us a very entertaining lecture on her recent travels to Bangladesh (her second trip there)

 She talked about the background of the country (threatened by rising water levels due to environmental change) and the kinds of textiles to be found there,

 Block printing - everyone on the Colouriscous tour got a chance to have a go.

 The lovely block Ruth used to print her fabric

 A sari spread out to be embroidered

 "Factories" are just workshops with a few machines. A lot of stitch is still done by hand but more power looms are being used.

 Threads left out to dry

 fabric manipulation before dyeing

 Being shown how to block print

 More beautiful embroidery

 The card system used to make woven cloth

 Ruth also had LOTS of brilliant samples of cloth. (I dont know how she got them all home)

 Isnt her dress and scarf just lovely too?

Thank you Ruth for a great lecture. Its always lovely to be an armchair traveller.

Christmas members workshop

The Christmas members workshop is always a lovely event - where everyone comes together to stitch and chat. This years activity was a christmas tree decoration swop.  We called it The Great British Sewing Tree.


Getting started.....

guess what Janet is making?

Gail starts a starfish - did she not get the theme? (only joking, it was a lovely star) 

 We also had a lovely display of Pat Wither's work lent by her family. She was a long term member of our Branch who sadly passed away at the beginning of the year. She is still very much missed.  What a prolific and talented stitcher she was

a page from her sketchbook

Di had a great necklace and Saskia quickly got stitching.  Look at that concentration!

what were those three so interested in?

a selection of ornaments for anyone needing inspiration

despite a poorly arm Joy came along to chat.

 Not everyone was paying attention

but when they did,  boy could they pose!

 Afternoon mince pies - yum yum.

And the finished tree - thanks to Jean for making it. We made such a lot of decorations that it started to wobble.

 And from the otherside. Look out for the sprout fairy!

It was a lovely day, with our usual fabulous sharing buffet. Thanks to all for making such a great day.

Happy Christmas!
Elise