October events: Karen Nicol '24/7 Stitch', and 'On our Doorstep' exhibition

24/7 Stitch

   

Our next meeting is on Friday 6th October, when we welcome renowned textile artist, Karen Nicol to give us a talk. The talk will look at her career as an embroiderer over fashion, interiors and gallery; the fantastic diversity and excitement of embroidery as a subject, looking at use of different materials and exploring and expanding traditional techniques. 

It will look at working with fashion designers and interior designers, answering a brief and the need to be constantly innovating to try to stay ahead of the game. Inspiration and the gallery side of Karen's work creating art pieces and showing in galleries.

Karen's art pieces have been exhibited around the world in various exhibitions, fairs and shows - you may have seen her striking embroidered and sculptured animals, ‘Couture Creatures’…from Napoleonic Polar Bears to Marquetry foxes, cut glass mandrills to tattooed monkeys.

In the book Embellished, New Vintage Karen explores her passion for the visual inspiration informing her embroidery that she finds in her magpie flea market collections.

Besides holding roles of senior lecturer, research fellow, visiting tutor and visiting professor on the textiles MA degree at the Royal College of Art, Karen won the Embroiderers' Guild Beryl Dean teaching award in 2014 and in November 2015 she was made a Royal Designer for Industry.

www.karennicol.com               

instagram@karennicol1

Visitors are very welcome to come to this talk.

Details are on our 'How to find us' page.

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We are also excited about our exhibition later in the month.

"On our Doorstep" 

opens with a Private View evening on Thursday 18th October 

at All Saints Church, Leamington Spa

and then continues until 4th November

The exhibition is open to all during church opening hours and is free of charge.

We hope visitors will come along and see this interesting collection of original stitched textile work, and take away some inspiration.

New term for Junior Embroiderers, and flower pictures

We are delighted to welcome some new junior embroiderers, who joined our group in September.  They enjoyed learning how to couch, work satin stitch and appliqué - and made a really good start.

The students also started on their DeDenne piece, though we can't show any pictures yet, since that would spoil our entry into the competition!

Following on from the JETS session, members and non-members came together to use machines with free-motion feet to make beautiful flowers.  They learned how to use soluble fabric with layers, including organza and threads which were trapped between layers of contrasting organza, using stitch.

This resulted in the lovely easels shown below.