A delayed march newsletter

Embroiderers’ Guild – Bolton Branch      March 2018

 

Regional Day

 We need final numbers tonight for our Regional Day on 21^st April at the Wellington Park Hotel, Leyland.  The tickets are £26 including lunch.  If you wish to attend, please give your names to Sheelagh.  There are two competitions of interest at regional day: The Rose Bowl competition on the theme of “Our Beautiful North West”, and the Autofill Award for “Excellence in Embroidery”. More details of the conditions and judging criteria are on the notice board.   Both competitions will be judged at the regional day.

The National AGM this year is in Milton Keynes on Saturday 14^th April. Details on the noticeboard.

The NW region journal will be published in April, price £1.

Exchange Visit.

We will be visiting Merseyside branch on Saturday 16^th June in the afternoon.   We have our three members who will speak for about 20 minutes each about their embroidery experience and show examples of their work.  All members are invited to go along in support and to meet Merseyside branch members and see what they do. We don’t get many opportunities to meet with EG members of other branches or see how they run their meetings, so this should be an enjoyable occasion. Details of the venue and times, etc nearer the date.   They hope to visit us in 2019.

Exhibitions

There doesn’t appear to be much going on regarding exhibitions at the moment. If you hear of any interesting exhibitions or events that you think may be of interest to us, please let Sheelagh know.  In the meantime:

Ten Plus Textiles are having exhibition in the Atkinson Gallery, Lord St, Southport from 7^th April – 15^th July.  Open Mon – Sat 10am to 4pm. 

Glossop EG have an exhibition of their work until 23 March at Jobling Gowler Solicitors, 250 Park Lane, Macclesfield SK11 8AD, open weekdays 9.30 – 4.30pm.

Our Bolton blog: begstitchers.blogspot.com

We now have Facebook pages for Bolton and NW Region. Please ‘like us’ to help publicise the Guild

and our activities.

If you have any spare hand made cards for birthdays, please give to Ann.

Raffle prizes are always welcome.  Please see Janet if you have anything.

If there are any library books you think would be suitable for us, please tell Linda. (An ISBN would be helpful).  Anything for the sales table please give to Karen.

March with Bella May Leonard

An interesting title to our talk last night,Sculptured Stitch. I had a pretty good idea what i would see as I had been taight by Bella at Summer school a few years ago.It was lovely to meet up with her again.
Bella is certainly an imaginative and somewhat whackey stitcher, who love perspex. At our summer school we used acetate and a laminator but for her graduate piece, Bella made a life size arch , embellished with unusal "thread" to represent her journey and completion of her degree. It was on display in the Market Place some years ago and no photograph could really do it justice.
However Bella gave us a potted history of her craft so far. She had worked at Gawthorpe Hall and many other interesting places, including the  Slumberland  bed factory. Her view of materials and what can be done with them is amazing. I loved her work for the Orient House in Manchester, combining social and industrial history  and using the jaquard loom as her starting point.
Bella has travelled and learned many new skills, including a variety of local mexican stitches that were really colourful. My photos will not do justice but she can be contacted for presentations/workshops at
bellaleonard@hotmail .com
Thank you Bella for your amazing slant on stitching. I will never really use perspex but love your thought process.

An idea of her work in perspex

Mexico, stitching , braids and back strap weaving.

 India

and Bella CAN use a basic needle and thread!!!!

Our meeting began with Glennys showing us 4 of her pieces that were inspired by Marion Jasmiks workshop.

and finally there was a small display of the work created at the Encaustic Art workshop last weekend. Most pieces need a lot of stitching.

March workshop.

Sue Tyldesley came back for a second workshop yesterday. Sadly due to illness we were down on numbres but fortunate for those of us there as it gave us a better opportunity to experiment and take Encaustiv Art a stage further, Sue had planned that we could make a book cover or bag with one technique, create a carvas picture with a second or make a vase cover as a third. I went along with the second option in mind but some members were keen to try them all.
Sue is a very patient instructor who began by demonsatating each of the techniques. She also brought along her demo pieces, lots of fabrics and papers and of course her waxes and all the associated equipment. Last time I had purchased an iron and the waxes so was keen to use my own.

Looking at her samples, it was difficult to choose what to do.

Demos over we needed to start. I chose the picture so we experimented firstly on card and transferred the image to fabric before a second attempt staright on to the carvas. The flower image is quite random and needs to be enhanced by stitching. I have jsut started...

A flst tyre and a very important rugby match meant that I left earlier than usual. I have Ann to thank for taking some show and tell photos at the end.

You can see just how much work we managed. Thank you again, Sue. I hope your journey home was not hampered too much by the snow.