My Crafty Trips - Ruth Tykiff 6th July

Ruth gave us an insight into the textile trips that she has made during the last 12 months. She saw and did so much I was exhausted just listening to her !!

Nepal

Her first trip that she told us about at the end of last year was to Nepal. She arrived exhausted in Katmandu after an overnight flight. Although you can normally see the Himalayas there was cloud cover all the time that she was there and only got to see Everest on a flight before they left

Ruth's trip took her to refugee camps and women's skill centres where she saw weaving and painting

 

At the women's skill centre she saw cotton from India being dyed and woven. This form of weaving is strap weaving and you can see a selection of the finished rolls

Ruth also went to a centre where felted balls and pads were made 

Indonesia

Ruth's next trip was to Indonesia with her daughter Heather

She informed us that Indonesia consists of 17,000 islands of which 6000 are inhabited

Apparently as an aside Ruth told us that the currency is very complicated - 100,000 rupiah to 5 GB pound, which resulted in her paying £160 for a bottle of wine !!!!

There are lots of volcanoes but they didn't see the nearest one as it was shrouded in mist. Sounds familiar !!!

They visited a puppet museum and puppet painting workshop, where the puppets are made of leather, animal hide and horn. 

They had a go at painting one too

Their next workshop was Batik. They were shown how to use a Tjanting to apply the wax 

 and then the fabric was dyed

Heather even did her own thing and painted an image of her fiance

Ruth and Heather also visited a Batik museum where they were told that only the royal family can wear certain colours. They saw beautiful examples of these fabrics

They were also shown examples of Ikat weaving

Towards the end of their trip they were able to try eco printing

This is only a small amount of the talk but gives an insight into the experiences that Ruth had in Nepal and Ruth and Heather had in Indonesia.

Thank you both for an interesting and entertaining talk

WCE trip to Ally Pally - Stitch Show

 WCE trip to Ally Pally - Stitch Show

We had a great day at 'Ally Pally' on Sunday. 

On entry we saw some of the exquisite quilts on display and other exhibition pieces. There were many, many stalls. W all came home with additions to our stash (things we didn't intend to buy of course 😁).  As you can see from the pictures below, there are a lot of very talented people out there stitching in many forms.

It was a tiring, but really great day.

Thank you Mandy for organising the trip, and to Ruth and Margaret for their help too.

 Members day making flowers - March 16th

We had a lovely day yesterday making flowers for the St Benedict Church, Wombourne flower festival in June.

Techniques included were wet felting, silk tulips, lutrador, machine stitching on dissolvable film and Kanzashi folded flowers.

Our members Lorraine, Mandy, Margaret, Ruth and Una ran the various 'stations' and a big thank you to them.

Here are some of the flowers that we made

I think the display will be fabulous when they are all put into arrangements

Angie Hughes - Stitch Glimpses

 Angie started by taking us back down memory lane, talking about how she worked for John Nash, Interior Designer, then discovering City & Guilds in Malvern, where she surprised herself being able to create, especially with machine embroidery.

She won the Charles Henry prize which led to her having an article in Embroidery magazine. She has been inspired by many things, including poetry and words in general, and in particular The Ledbury Rap by the poet Mark, as well as other poets and poetry.

Here are some examples of her work, using collage and words.

We look forward to our workshop with Angie, where collage, lettering, paper and fabric will all be used in our work. She suggested that we choose a picture, turn it over for a few days, then when we look at the image again and write the words quickly that come to mind, using these as our focus for our work.

Jennifer Collier - Paper Dresses Workshop

Jennifer Collier - Paper Dresses Workshop

A lovely day was had by all, with a very big thank you to Jennifer, for her enthusiasm, skill and help throughout the day. 

Jennifer's practical demonstrations were clear and instructive.

Her examples gave us all lots of differing inspirations to construct our own dress.

Our finished and semi-finished dresses, all very different - all very lovely and inspiring.

We were shown how to stitch paper, make pockets, bindings, buttons and other embellishments to make our dresses personal to us.

  Fronts and Backs too

  

We brought some of our own papers and Jennifer was very generous with buttons, bags of interesting papers to use, as well as many templates for the collars, pockets, and other embellishments.

Jennifer can be found at Unit 12 and we hope to see her back again soon.

Teresinha Roberts - Silk Road to Birmingham

Teresinha gave us a fascinating insight into the world of silk and her journal with this beautiful material. Teresinha told us a little about her own life from Brazil, via Malawi to the UK and how caterpillars have played a big part in her life.

She now has Mulberry trees on her allotment to produce her own silk and explained how silk is very different from other fibres, in that it has long fibres which allows the drape in silk garments. It is a very tough material in spite of its delicate appearance and has been used for fishing nets, medical procedures as it is non-allergic, as well as the cross hairs on microscopes!

Silk is extruded not grown, unlike other fibres has no cellular structure which is why is is has long fibres and the reason it is shiny is because of its prism type shape, which reflects the light.

The oldest piece of silk that we know of is 5,500 years old, which is staggering and it is thought to have been a baby's cloth.  

There are different types of silk, depending on whether the silk is reeled or spun and there are 100+ types of silk worm, such as Tussah and these are bigger than Mulberry worms and feed on Oak leaves.

Teresinha has a lovely way of speaking and has other talks on Wild Fibres and I am sure we will be inviting her back very soon. Her website is www.Wildfibres.co.uk