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

Lorraine Brettle's workshop

16th November 2019.  One of our members Lorraine, ran a workshop on creating a memory book.  Many thanks to Gail for providing the following text and images.

Although we were a small and select group yesterday, we had a lovely time making treasured memories with Lorraine Brettle. She was very generous with both her time and her materials, giving us inspiration to turn our collections of photos and other ephemera into items of beauty.

 

She talked about how her pieces are not planned. Instead they tend to evolve as she works with her special items. She keeps adding decorative stitching and embellishments to enhance the pictures and tell the story until she is satisfied with the result. Most of the items were worked onto calico as the base fabric. Lorraine uses images printed onto fabric and decorated with assorted scraps, ribbons, lace and buttons. A die-cutting machine can be used to cut out shapes from fabric. Ironing Bondaweb onto the back of the fabric before cutting makes it easier to produce precise shapes. For example, tiny hexagons cut from vintage fabric give the impression of a tiny patchwork quilt. Images, words and phrases can be stamped onto fabric and then added to the story.