Art in the Park is this week-end: 3rd - 4th August

The branch has a great riverside position - Stall J14 - be sure to come and say hello.

Visitors are invited to stop for a few minutes and stitch a house or a tree, or other details, onto a riverside townscape.
   

All materials are provided, and we are trying to be as environmentally friendly as possible by using only recycled materials in the construction. We're hoping the town will have grown to a good size by the end of the week-end.

We are grateful to Needles2Pins for generously supplying us with needles for use on the stand.

We have an exciting two-day summer school workshop coming up - something a little different!

Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd August 2019, 10 am - 4 pm

at Leek Wootton Village Hall. 

£50 + £4 kit payable on the day

Liz Cooksey - Mixed Media Wire Compositions

Liz Cooksey

There are two places available on this workshop.  

If you are interested, please contact: leamingtondistrictdaysch@gmail.com

In her works, Liz Cooksey takes inspiration from natural habitats; hedgerows, garden borders, meadows. She creates shapes and structure with wire and copper in which she combines delicate fine crochet in a varied palette of subtle colours.

Over the course of the weekend you will be introduced to a breadth of techniques that can be explored, developed and made your own. Key techniques will focus on different ways of combining wire, thread, fabric and paper.

On the Friday Liz will show us a broad range of techniques to explore and experiment with. 

The aim is to make individual elements to be used on Saturday to bring together into final compositions. 

Useful equipment and materials for the workshop

The following are suggestions only, so please do not worry if you don’t have specific items - Liz will provide materials.

• Pliers –  Smallish wire cutters/snips, round nose pliers, Flat pliers
• Collage materials, printed papers, maps, old books, buttons… 
• Any printing blocks, ink pads
• Crochet hook e.g. 0.6mm 0.75mm 1.25
• Fine threads that could be used for both crochet and hand stitching.
• Fabrics, fragments old and new, found bits and pieces.

The kit is wire which has been prepared - straightened, painted and shaped - to allow us to get on and explore the techniques and process Liz is going to show us. Preparing the wire is time consuming and by having this ready to go saves us time and will allow us all to get going straight away.

Liz Cooksey

http://www.lizcooksey.com/home

Art in the Park Festival, 3 - 4 August

We are very excited to be taking part in this year's event

in Jephson Gardens, Leamington Spa

Saturday 3rd to Sunday 4th August. 

The event is open from 10 am - 6 pm. 

Last year there were a staggering 46,000 visitors. It felt at times as if all of them visited us! Ours was a very popular stall, since it was an activity that all ages and all abilities could join in for free.

This year we will be inviting visitors to help us stitch a town .... a town that has a river flowing in front of the buildings, with trees, flowers, ducks or whatever takes the visitor's imagination, stitched onto an A3 size panel. The panels will afterwards be stitched together to create a 'modern Bayeux Tapestry'!

Help us to stitch a riverside town

The idea is to combine the two themes of 'Home', which is the Embroiderers' Guild National Stitch Day theme, and 'Water' - the theme chosen by Art in the Park organisers. A winning combination, surely! 

Visitors will be invited to choose a building and/or a tree and stitch it onto a painted background. All ages are welcome.

All materials used at the event will be supplied and encouragement freely given. In the interests of making the activity as ecologically friendly as possible, materials used will be recycled fabrics and offcuts.

Packs will also be available for visitors to purchase. 

Our stall will be decorated with bunting made by members - look out for the red and white bunting - and we will encourage you to pick up and have a closer look at various stitched and embroidered items made by members.

Do come along and be part of this brilliant event.

Folk Tales with Anne Kelly

Anne Kelly's talk last Friday took us on a fascinating tour through a number of her recent projects, commissions and exhibitions, illustrated with a wealth of images and samples to drool over.  Anne described how she is inspired mainly by botanical, narrative and geographical themes, which she combines with 'found' textiles in her unique folk-art style.  

Anne Kelly

Particularly intriguing among her many samples, were the paper maps laminated and stitched onto paper or fabric, which creates an unusual and very tactile material.

Anne Kelly

On Saturday’s 'Folk Tales' workshop Anne stressed that she wanted people to use pieces of fabric they already had, ideally things that had relevance for the stitcher, and which could create a meaningful piece of work. The aim was not to buy any materials for the workshop, but to incorporate textile fragments that would have some emotional resonance. Anne also stressed the importance of keeping things simple and uncomplicated.

As preparation, we spent a couple of hours with carved wooden stamps - printing some basic shapes to use on our pieces – and cutting a simple stencil, e.g. a bird or flower outline. Symbols from nature are, of course, central to folk art, especially birds, flowers, trees and hearts.  

Inevitably, the selection of a suitable background fabric and placement of images led to much deliberation and digging into piles in baskets, bags and boxes.  Fortunately, Anne has a very good eye for what is going to work well, and was extremely helpful – guiding each individual in appropriate choices and placement.

We started on some stitching after lunch, using thread colours that would enhance and emphasize the shapes we had put down – somewhat against most people’s natural tendency to want to blend and integrate. 

Thanks to Anne’s careful time management and decisiveness in not letting us over-complicate our designs, we enjoyed a relaxed and very satisfying workshop. Naturally, most of the stitching will be done at home, but we finished the day with a clear idea of what we were going to do and the feeling that it had been a day well spent.

Members' work created on the day: