Talk on Friday 2nd July: Sue Brown, 'Same Sea, Different Boat'

We are delighted to welcome artist Sue Brown to give our talk in July.

Friday 2nd July, 6.45 for 7.00pm 

'Same Sea, Different Boat'

Sue Brown is an artist who uses printmaking and mixed media to tell stories. Inspired by process as much as by nature, her work springs from the pages of sketchbooks, and she develops carefully researched themes, exploring and developing them on paper and textiles.

Sue has been an artist for over 20 years and is inspired by all things ornithological, being particularly fascinated by the antics of corvids and our relationship with the feathered visitors to her urban garden.

Entomological museum collections also feature in her work and Sue has become intrigued by printmaking onto fabrics and vintage textiles.

Driven by the need to learn new processes and collect techniques to keep her practice fresh, Sue continues to explore our natural world.

Sue is passionate about encouraging creativity in others through printmaking and mixed media sketchbook techniques. At the yard: ARTspace, Cheltenham, Sue runs a range of courses and workshops focusing on intaglio printmaking and sketchbook techniques on paper and fabric.

The project - 'Same Sea, different boat' 

Sue will talk about the international quilt project, ‘Same Sea different Boat’, which she started in lockdown. We have all experienced this pandemic, but not all in the same way; hence we have all been in the same sea, but not in the same boat. Following the talk, Sue will explain how you can take part.

Sue will demonstrate how to make a simple collagraph plate which she is offering to print for us (£3 donation). 

Please note - all the details of where to send your collagraph plate with your £3 donation to cover costs, will be sent out on an instruction sheet after the talk. For an extra £2 donation you can have two copies, so you will have one to keep (£5 donation in total).

When the fabric square has been printed by Sue and has been returned to you, you will then, after stitching into the print, send it back to Sue for inclusion in the project. Thus, it will become part of this giant social documentation textile.

No previous printmaking knowledge is required, you just need a story to share.

Show & Tell:  Saturday 3rd July, 2.45 for 3.00pm

Share your collagraph plate with us.

If you have already taken part in the project, where possible please show an image of it, and just make a different collagraph plate.

Alternatively, if you want to go straight to stitch, express your lockdown experience on a 10 x 10 cm square, which you may decide to send in for the community project or keep for your own enjoyment.

If you would rather not say anything during the Show & Tell session, it's absolutely fine, you can let us know at the start of the session.

If you are already registered for these Zoom sessions, the link will be sent to you a couple of days before the talk. The requirements list has been emailed previously.  

If you have not registered and wish to take part, please email: dayschool@warwickshirestitchers.org.uk for details of how to pay and receive the link.

Important: The contents of these notes should not appear on Instagram or any other social media, and members are asked to respect tutors' livelihoods and not circulate them by email or by any other means.

Summer School with Anne Kelly

2-day Summer School Workshop 

'Mapping your Journey' with Anne Kelly 

Friday 30th & Saturday 31st July /

Monday 2nd & Tuesday 3rd August

We are able to offer two dates for this popular Zoom workshop with Anne, which means more places are available.

Both sessions will start at 9.45am for 10.00am each day, and finish at 1.00pm 

Price: £30.00

If you would like to book a place, please email: dayschool@warwickshirestitchers.org.uk for payment instructions, requirements list and login details.

Mapping your Journey

Finding ways to honour precious memories is the theme of Anne's workshop, taking inspiration from her book Textile Travels. 

You will be using meaningful images, ephemera and a map or portion of a map to create a record of a physical or emotional journey.

We will be working from a collection of photos or postcards, old receipts and brochures, to create either a folding book about 10 x 45 cm or a collaged piece no larger than 30 x 30 cm using these elements. 

The resulting piece will be a personal response to a special place or event. Stitch, drawing and collage will be used. 

For members to get the best experience we recommend they continue working on their pieces on the Friday afternoon, and although they may not finish by Saturday lunchtime, they will know how to complete them by the end of the workshop.

A brief biography

Anne was born and educated in Canada and at Goldsmiths College in London. She collects recycled fabric, paper and ephemera using collage, stitch and print techniques. Her inspirations are travel, memory and vintage imagery from a variety of sources. Anne's layered mixed media work started life as mainly botanical in subject matter before developing into larger more narrative works. Often it can be a small scrap or remnant of fabric that inspires a whole piece.

Anne teaches and exhibits widely in the UK and abroad, including at the World of Threads festival in Canada, the Prague Patchwork Meeting and the Jersey Textile Showcase. Recently she was an invited artist at textile shows in Beaujolais, the Luberon and the Autumn and Spring Knitting and Stitching Shows. Anne writes for magazine and websites and blogs. She co-authored her first book Connected Cloth (2013) and is the author of Textile Nature and Textile Folk Art, all Batsford Books. She has work in national and international collections and is on the Crafts Council Makers Directory.

www.annekellytextiles.com

www.annekellyartist.net

 

A few more ...

Jenny developed her spots from a sample inspired by Hanny Newton's workshop last year (the last face-to-face one before lockdown!) picking up on the idea of making 'sequins' from coloured acetate:

This sample is on paper, using chocolate wrappers:

Mary had a lot of fun machine stitching her dots and spots in a variety of threads and adding interesting embellishments (stars and planets?):

Mary also shared a piece finished following Vinny Stapley's workshop challenge, which shows how she has developed the original theme:

It's wonderful to be able to keep sharing members' fabulous work.

Please send photos to: it@warwickshirestitchers.org.uk

Lots of Spots ...

As anticipated, here are some members' fabulous spots and dots created in response to Kate Wells' challenge last week.

Judi said she enjoyed having a 'play' with mainly machine embroidery, and this collage shows the six samples she made.

For those who like to know what techniques were used, they are as follows, going clockwise from the large gold circle:

Small snippets of gold mesh fabric trapped between two pieces of silk organza and stitched in free motion circles. The centre was left unstitched and the organza cut away on top to reveal the snippets. 

The multi coloured metallic 'spots' were also trapped between organza and circles free machined using gold thread. Again, the top layer of organza was cut away, revealing the colours. 

Gold net was placed over cream calico, and small circles free machined using a black and white thread. Sequins and beads were added later. 

Some metallic cord was couched down by machine, using gold thread, on calico. The circle was then cut out and hand stitched onto black cotton fabric. Gold 'kid' leather spots were applied by hand, secured with a seed bead. 

A very fine black mesh fabric was placed over silk organza and a gold spot of plastic fabric was placed in the centre. Free motion circles were added, using the black and white thread again. Gold sequin flowers and beads  were added by hand. 

A piece of gold, sequinned ribbon was attached to white organza and free motion embroidery secured it in place. A circle of stitch was added to the centre, creating a spot, and more stitching around the outside. 

All six samples were then cut into 4" squares, backed with 'stitch & tear' and edge stitched in gold thread. Judi then put them in a previously made concertina book. 

Margherita used the following techniques:

Top sample below: hand-stitched star; French knots; sequins; machine stitch around the fabric.

Bottom sample: free-machined spirals; sequins; French knot spots.  

Sue C's piece on calico uses running stitch in various weights of thread, from sewing cotton to waxed repair thread. The gold spots are cut out of a tomato paste tube. 

The black piece below is all machine embroidered. Sue cut out holes and backed them with gold lace on black velvet, then applied spots in black and white, and stitched them with grey, white and metallic thread. 

She says, "I loved this workshop, the only problem was restricting myself to one spot of gold, which I haven't managed to do."

Gill is also someone who felt "very inspired by the incredibly talented Kate Wells and the talk she gave (so much so I could not get to sleep!). For the experimental stitch task we were set, I decided to use my sewing machine and play with my machine stitches and bobbin colours. I chose not to hand stitch, as I stitch so slowly.

"I was absolutely amazed at how much the other hand stitchers had got done and really admired all the beautiful and incredibly varied work which was shown by everyone.

I started off by experimenting on a small piece and then realised, as it was so quick to do, that I had plenty of time to make a little circular book, which can be hung up for display. It’s made from ten 2" paper circles, connected with a slight gap, backed on to a reused piece of tape. The three blank spaces are to have hand stitched spots hopefully quite soon, and then I will be able to cover the back of the circles and make a fastening to finish it off."

There must be lots more pieces in progress out there - so please do share your photos to inspire us. ( it@warwickshirestitchers.org.uk )

Hoping for lots of dots ....

We enjoyed a super talk from Kate Wells last week about her fascinating journey to develop her work from black and white mark making with different media to intricate, large-scale gold lace hangings. Sketchbooks are an important tool in her work.

We are very much looking forward to receiving photos of members' "dots and spots" as a result of Kate's challenge to us at the end of her talk.  She encouraged us to experiment and be inventive in sampling different ways of creating dots, and we saw some very imaginative pieces at the show-and-tell session on Saturday afternoon. It will be a treat to share those ....

Meanwhile, here are a couple more super pieces from members following last month's scrap bag challenge.

Mary went for deep colours, with pieces unified with single-colour stitching and extra embellishments:

Julia O.'s background fabric is dyed with turmeric. She made use of limited resources: threads are mostly left overs from various cross stitch kits, starting with running stitch and incorporating other stitches, with colours chosen to link to the fabrics, which are part Gelli printed, furnishing samples and commercial print samples in a mix of fibre type and texture.

She says she would do the challenge again with a better choice of scraps (these tended to fray when cut small, making stitching fiddly) and sees it forming part of a book cover. 

As always, ladies, please do keep sharing photos of your work, they are a wonderful inspiration to us all.  

it@warwickshirestitchers.org.uk

Kate Wells: 'Black and White to Gold'

Friday 4th June, 6.45 for 7pm start 

Kate Wells: 'Field of Gold' - machine embroidered lace, 4' x 2'

Drawing – in pencil and pen and ink – features centrally in Kate Wells’ work leading to making stitched drawings and filling sketchbooks with landscapes and birds. A richer aspect includes gold, intricate pattern, machine embroidered lace and exquisite jewel-like detail. 

Kate Wells, Stitched drawing 8" x 8"

In this talk, Kate will show the connection between the two and the common language of both elements of her work. 

Kate will also be attending the ‘show and tell’ session on 

Saturday 5^th June 2021, 2.45pm for 3pm.

About Kate Wells

Kate has been making embroidered work since leaving art school over 40 years ago. She trained at Loughborough and Manchester, she taught for a while at Glasgow School of Art and was an exhibiting member of the 62 Group. A regular exhibitor at Art in Action she has demonstrated and taught workshops, taking part in group exhibitions and also working to commission. Her studio is at her home in Sheffield.