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.