National Stitch Day 2019

National Stitch Day at the Black Country Living Museum – Saturday, 22^nd June 2019

What a great and successful day!  After much preparation including cutting out felt for chain links and felt with sari-silk for bookmarks, a group of us met at the Black Country Museum to spread the word of our interest in stitch.  The day coincided with the ‘Windrush Event’ also being held near the entrance to the Museum.  There were 200-250 people coming from London, Nottingham, Leicester and our local area.  We not only had children and adults visiting the Museum itself, but also from this event.  They embroidered their names on the links, which are being kept at the Museum to be used in future events supporting the opening of the new 1940 -1960s village in four years time, and/or they threaded sari-silk through the felt bookmarks and embellished them with stitch which they could take home with them.

 

We were entertained with our own ‘walk-by’ fashion show of people dressed in costume of the day as they entered the main hall.  What lovely clothes they wore.  We were offered cake from a Caribbean cake shop and listened to a steel band.  Many people stopped by to chat and see what we were doing.  We spread the ‘word’.

 

Thank you all who attended on the day, and also to those who helped in the cutting out of felt at the Members’ Workshop.

 

Karina and Carole

Art Van Go Workshops

We treated ourselves to a workshop with Art Van Go on the weekend. In order to get as many of us on it as possible we held it over 2 days.  It was a fast and furious pace with Viv Arthur telling us loads of information about all sorts of paints and mediums. She was a fabulous teacher who really knew everything about her products. 

mixing paint on a plastic palete

a finished sample

 Once we had played with making metallic paints or making metallic backgrounds we moved on

masking off areas

making more layers 

looking at transparent and opaque paint

the difference between colours on black and white fabric

  Here are the photos of all the marvellous work we did during the day.

putting on the base layers

it took a lot of concentration

playing with rollers made us very happy!

something interesting going on over there

Janet using her favourite colour

lots more concentration here too

layered pieces with masking tape on

what was the surprise Carole?

lots of markal sticks being used

torn masking tape for a different effect

and once you have taken it off you can keep the masking tape for other work

Viv told us that she is hoping to retire.  We will miss her very much and wish her every happiness when she does finally put her feet up. Thank goodness we got this workshop in now - it was great fun and the results are fantastic.

Annie Bowden lecture

  Talented local print maker Annie Bowden came to us on Saturday and what a delight it was!

Her enthusiasm and passion for printing as well as her expertise just shone through.  She says she gets an adrenaline rush from printing because you dont know until you pull the print if it has worked. 

She talked us through the four main types of printing (relief, intaglio, lithography and screen printing)  and her materials (printing plates from cardboard boxes, plastic packaging, wall paper, woodwork adhesive [waterproof], charbonelle ink and printing paper).   Her exhibition at Chase Water starts shortly and it is definately worth checking it out.

Annies very large prints that were printed by walking on them!

just one page from her degree book

  Lots of fabulous work on show in her sketchbooks (Annie thought these weren't very good but I disagreed)

interesting textures

 Her early prints were highly detailed and representational

 Some had colour added after printing

 Annie preparing a collograph plate for us using some "sourced" wallpaper from a DIY store,

 Her more recent work is becoming more natural and free.

including printing a daffodil

 More botanical prints

 Some prints made into a little book after a book making lesson at Connect In Threads (taught by yours truly)

another large print

 Annie also makes quilts. (She said she hasnt yet worked out how to combine print and stitch). This is her quilt making a positive statement about some of the awful things that happened in 2016.

 The final print from the plate made on the day

 It was a fascinating and entertaining lecture and I could have added lots more photos here but this gives you a flavour of the beautiful work we saw. Thank you Annie for a great afternoon - definately someone to invite back as we just ran out of time to see it all.


Elise