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 18th 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
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