Colours to Dye for, a talk by Marion Plumb - Friday 1st July

Marion is a mixed media textile artist working from a small studio at her home in the West Midlands. She is a member of the exhibiting group Eclectica and Birmingham Embroiderers’ Guild. Marion's work style is varied and includes framed pieces, handmade journals, hangings and wearable art garments.  

All her work starts with a piece of undyed cloth – silk, linen or cotton. She is a keen dyer of fabric and thread and the unpredictable results of experimental sessions are often the inspiration for a piece of new work. She uses both free machine and hand stitch.

 Visitors are very welcome - please see details under 'How to find us'.

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*** Owing to a last-minute cancellation, there is still a place available on Marion's workshop on Saturday 2nd July: 

Papermaking – Pull, Couch, Press

Participants in this workshop will produce unique handmade paper using cotton linters, recycled materials and a variety of other ingredients. The paper can be used in many ways – mixed media textile art, handmade journals, greetings cards, labels etc – and paper you have made yourself adds an extra dimension of originality to your work.

If you are interested in taking up this place, please contact Jenny Archer on 01926 338987 / jennyarcher401@gmail.com

Capability Brown Open Days at Charlecote Park

Leamington Branch is currently displaying work in the "Landscapes of Capability Brown" exhibition in The Orangery Restaurant at Charlecote Park, near Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Orangery Restaurant

There will be a number of drop-in days for visitors to see a demonstration, to sit and stitch for a while, or to participate in stitching a ‘Charlecote Bayeux’ by adding a few stitches to an image of Charlecote.  The next drop-in days will be on: 

Tuesday 28th June 

Monday 4th July 

Saturday 6th August (which is also National Stitch Day)

(Please note that normal National Trust admission fees apply.)

We would love visitors to come and have a go - no embroidery skills are needed.

Charlecote Park

At the end of the exhibition in October, the ‘Charlecote Bayeux’ will be put on display in the Education Room at Charlecote Park.  

Here are a few photos from the drop-in day on 10th June . . .

JETS meet at Charlecote

Leamington has a thriving JETS (Junior Embroiderers and Textile Students) group and Sally, one of the leaders, describes here their outing to Charlecote Park. The JETS' work is on display in the summerhouse not far from the Capability Brown exhibition in the Orangery restaurant.

Sally writes:

Instead of meeting on our usual Saturday at St Mary’s Church Centre we met this month at Charlecote Park as part of the CB300 celebrations. We had the ‘privilege’ of being able to use the summerhouse where the JETS fish are being displayed. I say ‘privilege’ because normally the summerhouse is not open to the public and it was a bit of a dubious ‘privilege’ because we had to rely on natural light, which mainly came from the open door on a dull, wet day. We, of course rose to the challenge and the girls stitched. It made us think how girls used to stitch in poor light with only candlelight once dusk fell.

Firstly, we took a brief walk admiring the beautiful flowers in the garden to the open countryside to see a herd of young deer including an albino deer, and in the distance we could see swans on the lake.

Returning to the summer house the girls started to stitch deer and flowers.  These will be finished either at home or during the July meeting – we look forward to seeing them.

We were all thrilled to see the fish displayed and hope that many Charlecote visitors have enjoyed seeing them.

Sally Pinfold

Here are some photos taken at Charlecote:

JETS Fish Display

Panels inside the summerhouse

Stained glass panels in the summerhouse

Looking out to the garden from the summerhouse

The fish from inside the summerhouse

Charlecote has such beautiful flowers ...

... and landscapes

Looking into the summerhouse

Textile Plus and Open Garden during Warwickshire Open Studios

TextilePlus and Leamington branch members Jenny Archer, Penny Carpenter, 

Ruth Lockyer, Janet Rose welcome E.G. members and friends to their 

Warwickshire Open Studios event. 

You can find more information and directions at: 

www.warwickshireopenstudios.org

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Leamington member, Mary Stenning is also opening her garden 

in aid of Marie Curie and Macmillan nurses 

12-4pm on Sunday 26th June 

Mary's beautiful garden is right by the river and 

makes a lovely afternoon visit. 

You can find it at

   5 Carter Drive, Barford, Warwick CV35 8ET

Admission £3.00, children free

Refreshments and a raffle

Stitch Stories workshop with Cas Holmes, June 2016

Cas gave us a very entertaining talk on Friday evening, in which she explained how her family history, Romany culture and the places she had visited influenced her textile work. A feature of her work is the use of 'found' or reclaimed textiles, which help to tell stories in stitch.  The talk was illustrated with lots of inspiring images and examples, and then on Saturday it was our turn to try our hands at some of the techniques she uses.

As Cas reminded us through the day, one of the key words in developing our own personal stories in art/textile work is not 'ease' but 'simplicity', which generally has to be achieved through a good deal of hard work.  Travelling lightly is an important element of her Romany heritage. With this in mind, we were advised to bring a limited amount of materials with us - Cas travels everywhere with only a small sewing kit and minimal art materials, and she particularly advocates the challenge of working with limited resources. (Not that we necessarily followed this advice - it's too ingrained to try and ensure we've got everything we could possibly need for a workshop!)

After an introduction and explanation of momigami (literally "squeezed paper"), we got started on oiling, scrunching, colouring, printing, tearing and then ironing papers for the base of our pieces.  Our noses were kept well and truly to the grindstone ... we were encouraged to compose the main elements of our pieces before lunch, 'auditioning' the various papers we had textured, considering their values and properties, and how to use them to tell our own stories.

After lunch was the time to pull out materials that we wanted to add to the papers, still bearing in mind that word 'simplicity'.  We had a limited time to machine stitch all the pieces down, and then we started adding hand stitches, thinking about how stitch animates the work, and adds texture and depth.  

Finally, we got together to lay out the day's work and consider the various stories being told through paper, material and stitch.  We discussed what made a piece work, and especially how the ideas of things can be suggested through images, print and stitch, rather than being depicted literally. 

We all felt we had learned a good deal from the day, and were going home with samples that would help us to develop our own styles.  Thank you, Cas.