Speaker for November

The next meeting is Wednesday November 2nd, 2.00pm. and our speaker is Adam Brookes who you may know from his time on The Great British Sewing Bee.  Adam began to sew when he was just six, taught by his Nan.  He is a local lad, from Leicester who studied performing Arts at university before working on a cruise ship as an entertainer and was promoted to Entertainment Director.  He will be talking about his love of crafts, and his Sewing Bee experience.  It promises to be a very entertaining session, not to missed!! 

September Meeting

 Our Speaker at the October meeting was Linda Chevell.  She told us how much pleasure she gets from quilting and reminisced about doing workshops with Vicky Oswin and Jean Gentry.  Before she took up quilting full time she was an English teacher.  She retired from teaching in 2007 and by 2009 she was teaching patchwork and quilting to a few sewers in her own home.  Eventually this became Slipper Stitchers in Market Bosworth.

She said that she enjoys playing with colour and shape and particularly in shading the colours (Photo 1).  She showed us several examples.  Many of the quilts that she showed us had been created for her classes. 

Just prior to covid she had a quilt all set up for the next classes and successfully managed to transfer everything from face to face on to the internet.

At the summer school in Loughborough she had shown several of our members how to make perfect circles using reverse applique.  Some of these were in our show and tell session.

Currently she has started using the “Modern Quilting” Style which can be seen in the last photograph. 

We now have 14 people doing the travelling books and the first entries were displayed for everyone to see.

Please note that the next meeting starts at 2 pm.

October Speaker

Our October Speaker is Linda Chevell.  Her talk is entitled "Quilty Pleasures".

Bosworth based quilter and teacher, known for her meticulous work, precision piecing and perfect circles.  Linda will be telling us about her quilting style and journey.

A number of the group attended the Loughborough summer and school this year and enjoyed her perfect circles project, we saw some completed pieces last month and hope to see more at our October meeting.

Would you please bring the finished circles to the October meeting.

We also have Julie Chapman coming to the October meeting with her fabrics. 

September Meeting

 Kate Findlay began her career as designer working in the carpet industry and was made redundant in 1991 when the floor industry changed to hard floors or plain/mottled carpets. She then taught art in primary schools which included sewing. In the last class in their primary school the children were making quilts and one group won first at the Festival of Quilts.

Eventually she decided that design and textiles were her forte. She uses raw edge applique, bonding the fabric together and then free machine stitching for extra detail. Most of her pieces would be considered wall hangings and she backs them with felt rather than layering them up.

The subtitle of Kate Findlay’s talk was ‘Working in Series’ - that is the way that she likes to work. The first series she showed was about Henley with scenes of the spectators and rowers on the river. Her next series was inspired by photos of the hadron collider in Switzerland. She is also inspired by nature, particularly by birds. We all enjoyed the videos of her constructing her work.

Covid brought about changes in the way she works as her income came from talks and workshops, which had to stop. She then began to make up kits and cards; she has also produced designs which are licensed to companies for their exclusive use and sale.

She had brought with her a variety of the products she sells including kits, cards, fabric and books which were very popular with our members. Everyone enjoyed the meeting.

Detail from Bird Quilts

 Quilts inspired by the Hadron Collider

September Speaker

 

Kate Findlay is our speaker in September.  Her talk is entitled "Working in Series".

Kate is self employed as a textile artist and teacher. She lives with her partner and son in Berkshire, and has a studio at home on the second floor which gives her plenty of exercise up and down the stairs!

She trained in industrial textiles at Kidderminster College and worked in the carpet industry for a few years before retraining as a teacher. Kate taught Design Technology and Art in secondary schools for many years, before getting a job as an art teacher in a private primary school after her son was born. It was working part time here that allowed her own art to develop.

Kate produced a body of work inspired by the Large Hadron Collider. These were all textile pieces, with a number of large art quilts being the culmination of nearly five years of work. The series was exhibited widely and attracted international interest. In reaction to the scale and subject matter, Kate then turned to the natural world for inspiration and began a series of very small pieces inspired by birds, which has gradually grown to encompass a great variety of wildlife, and also landscapes and woodlands on a larger scale.

Kate travels the country giving talks and workshops based on all her work – and her ongoing interest in e-textiles and the use of other media. She has work in a number of Galleries, and exhibits at Art Fairs and Craft events throughout the year.

Making art is a complete passion and is probably the most important thing in her life right now!

July Meeting

 Karen Lane said how she had started crafting when she went to some craft classes to support a young girl she was working with.  The girl enjoyed the class and this lead to more classes.  Karen was hooked on crafting for herself as well.

She started with felt making and tried a range of techniques and then moved on to mixed media as well.  She had a beautiful display of all her different crafts and went through them explaining the different techniques she used and how they were the individual items were made.  This included the techniques which would be used in the workshop on the following day.

Jan Gamble and Gina Cooke's pictures from the workshop which was thoroughly enjoyed.

Workshops for September

Please note that there are spaces on the following workshops. 

On the 8th September Kate Findlay's workshop is entitled "Waterlilies" at the Community Church

On the 24th September Viv Denscombe's workshop is "Tiny Books"