Saturday 26 October 2019

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.









Saturday 12 October 2019

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