March Speaker

 

Our speaker for March is Gill Towell.  Her talk is entitled "My journey from Corporate Director to Sewing Entrepreneur".

In 2014 Gill set up GillyMac Designs to teach local children and adults to sew.  Gill quickly won national awards with her children’s classes and was recruited to teach classes for Liberty of London and works nationally for the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. 

Gill’s work has been shown around the UK as part of the GENArt movement, including being exhibited at the Turner Contemporary Gallery.

Over the past 5 years, Gill has expanded GillyMac Designs to four adult weekly classes and three weekly teen classes and the much loved Junior Sewing Bee.  Other classes are developed and fitted into this busy schedule.

Gill has also grown a large vibrant online community on Facebook and Instagram as well as setting up the online GillyMac Club for all her pupils to join and continue to share their work and learn from Gill regular online sewalongs.

Some examples of her classes below

Child and teen classes

Adult Classes

1-2-1 classes

February Meeting

Our first meeting of 2020 was our AGM.  Our chairman reported another successful year and the business part of the meeting was speedily covered.

This was followed by our speaker for the evening Sue Drage.  I think that had we been able to visit her recycling bin at home there would have been little to see!

Sue detailed numerous ingenious ways of using and re-using everyday discarded items to avoid them going into land fill.  From knitting with strips of plastic from carrier bags, making multi-use bags from crisp packets to using flattened metal cans and ring-pulls for jewellery Sue had brought them all to show and explain. (and surprise us all!)

Clearly Sue was passionate about using and re-using our planet's resources to the full.

Kathy Francis