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

February Speaker

Our February Meeting is the AGM followed by our speaker Sue Drage.  Her talk is entitled "Recycling with a Difference".

Sue Drage was born and bred in Rugby, Warwickshire and started crafting in 2012 after a health scare. Crafting then became a great help to her in coping with this.

Sue is now passionate about recycling and upcycling and creates things from many of the items most of us just throw away. She knits with supermarket carrier bags and makes ingenious creations from old cd’s, food tins, ring pulls from cans, magazines etc. These she transforms into handbags, shopping bags, earrings, purses and necklaces – all with huge visual appeal as well as practical uses.

She also makes cards for any occasion including 3D cards.  She has been featured on the Crafty Beggars TV programme on the Together Chanel.  Also on BBC Coventry and Warwickshire Radio, ITV Central News, BBC Midlands Today, The Sun, Star and Daily Mail newspapers and in Real People Magazine.

We look forward to seeing you all at the start of 2020.

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.