December Meeting

The talk for December is entitled "Home Made Quilts".  Jacquie Durber and Pat Screaton will be showing us quilts most of which have been made by Jill Cawrey.

Don't forget to bring food for the faith supper after the talk or any show and tell you may have completed.

Chris will bring haberdashery and materials in aid of Bloodwise and take away any scraps for recycling.  Please remember to bring any quilts for her to take to the hospital.

Pat Screaton will be bringing the flower club sales table.

There will also be the group sales table and the raffle.

We look forward to seeing you all.

November Meeting

Our speaker for November Moira Neale, entertained us with her illustrated talk on "Tuscany in Photographs".

She no longer makes large bed quilts but brought plenty of examples of her current small ones.

She showed us views of Tuscany and alongside were her interpretations in fabric and paint, the background often being achieved by the application of tea bags to old cotton sheets.

Moira explained her method of free machine quilting and her enthusiastic use of quirky colours for the details.  We were soon aware that the familiar tree shapes were almost certainly not green!

Kathy Francis

Examples of her work

Right:  Some of the pieces made at the workshop 

November Speaker

Our speaker for November is Moira Neal and her talk is entitled "Tuscany in Photos".

Moira Neal is a free machine artist and she loves to up cycle old cotton sheets to use in her work.  She enjoys dyeing, printing, stamping, marbling and appliqueing them to create her own unique cloth.  She no longer makes large bed quilts and now concentrates on making quirky work which she can use for her range of greetings cards.


She has had mobility problems and as a consequence wrote
her first book called 'Colourful Canvas Landscapes.  In the last few years she has won a number of prizes for her quilts and at the 2017 Malvern show her Gardener's World themed quilt won first prize for fabric painting and printing and overall championship as well.

She holds workshops in her studio for up to four people.  The days include a two course lunch.  Alternatively she can do a workshop for your group as she will be doing for us on the 7th November.

The workshop is 'Colourful Canvas Landscapes' when we will be able to paint onto canvases first and then applique colourful fabrics on to them and carelessly free machine them in place with plenty of wonky black stitching as if we are sketching with a black pen.

October Meeting

In spite of an uncooperative computer, meaning that no pictures were available Pat Ashton-Smith was able to show us many actual samples of her work.  On October 2nd her talk "In Search of a Voice" was varied and illustrated by beautiful items to look at.

Her early work was based on embroidery and she did City and Guilds.  Later she discovered further skills in textiles and quilting but not abandoning her stitching background.  Many of her original works are inspired by the area around her home in Northumberland.

She uses some traditional techniques but has developed her own methods.  Backgrounds are often pieced with intricate applique motifs in the foreground.  She had done a workshop for our members during the day including piecing a background.  We saw Gina's lovely completed background and look forward to seeing it finished, maybe next time...?

Examples of the work she showed us.

Kathy Francis

October Speaker

Our Speaker for October is Pat Ashton Smith.  Her talk is entitled "In Search of a Voice".

Pat lives on top of a hill in the beautiful Allendale Valley in Northumberland, UK with her two daughters and their  animals.  Originally trained as a lawyer, she discovered the wonderful world of textile art when her children were young and went on to study embroidery, quilting and textiles gaining her City & Guilds Diploma and qualifying as an Adult Tutor.

She has nearly 20 years experience of teaching and lecturing to a wide variety of groups including delivering City & Guilds Creative Embroidery.  She loves to introduce  her learners to  new and traditional techniques and to see  their excitement  and enjoyment at what they create.   She likes to challenge her students to design their own work but she is also happy to provide patterns for those less confident.

She does most of her creative work at home in a lovely sunny conservatory with fabulous views across the valley to a soundtrack of lapwings and curlews.  Consequently much of her work is inspired by the local landscape and wildlife.

She is a member of the Embroiderers’ Guild, the Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles and North-East exhibiting group Twyne.   She frequently travels around the country to give talks and workshops to a variety of groups and enjoys sharing her work and techniques with other stitchers.  She also offers group  workshops  in Catton Village Hall and one to one tuition in her conservatory studio.

Examples of her work.

Our speaker at the September meeting was Amanda from Monkey Buttons.  Many of us will have enjoyed using her patterns in the past.  She gave us an insight into the additional features within her patterns and told us how her colour palette has changed from taupe to bright colours with the arrival of her grandchildren.

September Speaker

On the 4th September the founder of Monkey Buttons Amanda Hall's talk is entitled " Its the Colours".

She will bring along around 50 different items - bags, wall hangings and quilts.  Each one will be discussed, looking at colours, design and techniques used.  Amanda is known for her love of Taupe fabrics.  Amanda says the title of the talk is "often what people are heard to say when looking at the stand at an exhibition. The soft muted colours blend well together, giving a harmonious effect."

A workshop will be held on Thursday 5th September and the following items will be available to make.  

African Basket

Harebell Wall Hanging

Berlin

This is a new bag pattern.  It is either a large wide bag with interesting pieced panel where the centres appear to float 20" wide at to and 12" at the base, 12"tall or a small plain bag 16" by 9" by 10".

In July Deborah O'Hare came with Tales from her Scrap Bag.  It was a very interesting talk demonstrating how many things could be made from scraps and how those small projects stimulated using different techniques.  Some of her projects are shown below.

July Speaker

Our Speaker for on the 3rd July is Deborah O'Hare.  Her talk is entitled "Tales from my Scrap Bag"

She is a contemporary quilter textile artist with a love of many techniques; producing machine embroidered and quilted pieces that incorporate her favourite medium; textile paint.
She studied Patchwork and Quilting and Machine Embroidery to City and Guilds level, and now teaches workshops and produce hand painted fabric, patterns and kits.
Her work reflects amongst other things the influence of the coastline and countryside of the Heritage Coast of South Wales where she lives.

Examples of her work.

June Meeting

What an entertaining and informative evening we had with Alison Hulme on the 5th June.  Alison was a humorous and engaging speaker: not one quilt was held up but so many projects were there and referred to in detail in her talk entitled "My Life in Print".  We were allowed to handle any of the quilts and look closely at them at the end.

Each work had a story and gave us an insight into how Alison's life and work as a textile artist evolved.  Her work is frequently exhibited and she produces unique fabric by experimenting with new prints and ideas.

Examples of her work.

June Speaker

The Speaker for May is Alison Hulme and her talk is entitled "My Life in Print".

Alison finished her Foundation Degree in 2013 and had great success selling her Bags and Pinnies at the Exhibition, she has since featured them in a number of venues  including the Knitting Stitching show at Alexandra Palace, The Designer Guild Shop at Pall Mall Galleries and the ICHF show at NEC Birmingham.

Exhibiting means she has had the chance to meet a great number of new people. She really enjoys sharing her enthusiasm through her talks and workshops.  

She is constantly getting new ideas for designs and this keeps her busy printing new fabrics. She has great fun trying out the new prints. 

She has been a member of Zero Nine Textile Artists since the group began. They were all at college together doing their City and Guilds. Since then they have exhibited together as well as doing their own exhibitions and work. 

Examples of her work

May Practical Evening

Firstly some errors need to be corrected on your Programmes for this year.  The dates for the meetings are all correct but unfortunately you will need to alter the dates for the workshops.  The date for the Monkey Buttons Workshop is 5th September not the 4th and the date for Pat Ashton Smith is Tuesday 1st October not the 3rd October.

On the practical evening we have three projects for you to try.  The first is a felted egg (picture to follow).  The second is making bookmarks or cards that involves the prick and stitch method for embroidering cards, using metalic thread.  See example

The third project is paper craft, making either a simple box or a box with roses on the top.  There will be a charge of £1 for each project. The money will be going to charity.

If you wish you can bring your own project to do and enjoy chatting with your friends.

April Meeting

We had an enjoyable evening with Edwina Mackinnon whilst she told us about her life so far.  Her quilts showed that she had tried lots of different techniques whilst she has been quilting.  Some examples are shown below.

The Speaker for April

Our speaker for April is Edwina Mackinnon.  Her talk is entitled "The Story so Far".

She loves anything and everything to do with textiles but especially stitch, by hand and machine, dyeing fabrics with indigo and Procion dyes and printing with whatever she fancies! She has just started to explore eco printing and is loving the results.

She has taught textile related subjects for almost 30 years, including City & Guilds courses. She now teaches her own courses and one-off workshops wherever she is asked to go.

An example of her recent work

She enjoys being out and about, taking photographs and collecting new ideas. At home she loves to cook and has a rather large collection of cookbooks. She is always trying out new recipes! She also enjoys pottering about in her garden and relaxing with a good book and there’s always a knitting project to work on.

She also enjoys spending time with her family and has four grandchildren who all live nearby.

March Meeting

On Wednesday 6th March we welcomed back Philippa Naylor for her talk "A Backbone, A Wishbone,  Funnybone".

It was truly an entertaining evening as Philippa worked her way, with accompanying slides, through her current phase of life and work.  Does she ever rest?  Topics included her family, her home and her work as well as frequent references to her beloved Yorkshire, all described with humour and seemingly at breakneck speed.

She is talented in so many craft areas as well as textiles and has time for home improvements, her allotment, cooking and teaching as well as producing exquisite garments and quilts.

The following day's workshop was so thoroughly prepared and presented in such detail.  We were worked hard but it was so worthwhile.

Kathy Francis

Examples of Philippa's miniature quilts