Member work

Member work

Thursday, 20 May 2021

*** Warwickshire Stitchers ***


You may know that Leamington & District branch of the Embroiderers' Guild has become

Warwickshire Stitchers

We are now an independent group of stitchers, whose interests are everything to do with textiles and stitching. New members are always welcome.

Many changes have happened within the Guild over the last few months, but this blog will still be featuring members' work, details of visiting textile artists (both in person and via Zoom), and notices for members. 

It will eventually become part of our brand new website, but until that gets going, the group's ongoing news and events will be here ....


*  *  *  *  *


Sunday, 16 May 2021

Vinny Stapley's Scrap Bag Challenge

Vinny gave us an interesting, colourful, jam-packed and well illustrated talk about her textile career, which left us amazed at her productivity and with lots of enthusiasm for the challenge she set us. This was to doodle random lines on a sheet of paper, and then use it as the basis for a set of pieced scraps, which could be embellished in whatever way took our fancy.  It was an ideal project for using up some of our seemingly never-diminishing stash, and for inspiring a bit of creativity.

Vinny joined us for the show-and-tell session the following day, and gave us some useful feedback and encouragement.

Here are some photos of some of your beautiful pieces ....

Judi's photos show the process of design and assembly:

 

She says, "Each section has been free motion stitched, using a different style, which I am trying to echo with hand stitch on top, e.g. flowers, swirls, leaves and vermicelli, and couching on the thicker yarns."



Gill decided to use some silk pieces that she felt she had been holding on to for too long,  

"I hope to continue working on my piece with the intention of making it into a picture. I was inspired particularly by many of the other pieces shown at our super show and tell, by the use of couching on top and the movement others had got into their pieces with their sewn lines."


Carol's finished stitchery uses a different colour palette, with plenty of scope for deciding how to make it up:



Shay completed her panels, one with machine stitch and the other hand stitched.


Dorothy also went for hand stitch:



While Margherita's panels are mainly machine stitched with some hand stitch:

 



Elizabeth has made up her panels into a bag.  The sheep are needle felted and made from sheep's wool collected from a walk that morning, and the silver piece is a mylar balloon found in a hedge on the same walk. 


There are probably quite a few more works in progress to be shared, so don't hold back, ladies, we do love to see them.

To round off, Lucy has sent us a photo of her pencil case, made following Angie Hughes' workshop, and which she will be using for Young Stitchers:





 


Monday, 3 May 2021

'Interwoven' - A talk by textile artist, Vinny Stapley


Friday 7th May, 6.45 for 7.00pm 

Interwoven’ 
Vinny talks about her family history and her working life in fashion and textiles 
and how they have influenced her Textile Art.

With a background in fashion textiles, Vinny now combines creating textile art with running workshops from her studio on Mersea Island in Essex, where she lives. Much of her work has focused on the natural ephemera of the landscape, in particular the fringes of the Blackwater, exploring marshes and tidelines through abstracted stitched form.

Her current body of work ‘Mersea Floriligeum’ is focused on exploring flora of the saltmarsh and inter-tidal zone, whose delicate natural forms and fine network of roots literally ‘mesh’ together parts of our fragile coastline. Vinny is a member of the East Textile group and her work was recently featured on the international textile website textileartist.org

Saturday 8th May 

Practical session

Friday night's talk will be followed by the start of a mini workshop called  

‘Scrap bag Challenge’ 

You will need a notebook, some plain paper and a pen to hand.

Instructions will be sent out after Friday's talk for you to refer to, 

with stitching to be done on the Saturday morning. 

-  Show and tell on Zoom: 2:45 for 3:00 pm -

with Vinny Stapley in attendance.

This will be an opportunity to ask questions and 

Vinny will finish by offering advice on how to move the pieces forward.