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:

'The Natural World' by Anne Kelly

Our talk on Friday 5 July is by well-known textile collage artist, Anne Kelly, who explains the influences and projects from her career. 

Anne Kelly current work

Anne was born and educated in Canada and at Goldsmiths College in London. She collects recycled fabric, paper and ephemera and uses 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.

As well as teaching and exhibiting widely in the UK and abroad - members may have seen her at the Compton Verney Textile Fair last year - Anne writes for magazines, websites and blogs. She co-authored her first book ‘Connected Cloth’, and is the author of ‘Textile Nature’ and ‘Textile Folk Art’. She has work in national and international collections and is on the Crafts Council Makers Directory.

 

www.annekellytextiles.com         www.annekellyartist.net   instagram  annekellytextiles

Visitors are always welcome to come to our Friday evening talks.  

Details are on the right under 'Where we meet'.  Visitor price: £6

Shimmering Leaves

Jan Tillet's talk on Friday evening held everyone spellbound, and we were blown away by the sheer volume of work she has produced, as well as the vibrancy of her stitched textiles.

 Sally modelled a coat made by Jan which featured a beautiful embroidered panel, using recycled silk flowers:

We were not disappointed then, when we embarked on our own "Shimmering Leaves" panels on Saturday's workshop.  

Tutor's work

Basing them on leaf shapes stamped onto organza, and playing around with compositions, everyone had a lot of fun creating their own vibrant piece:
  

They are still works in progress, since there's plenty more stitching to add - as can be seen from the back of one of the tutor's panels:

Jan provided us with a great day, and a lot of guidance and inspiration.  It's bound to be one of those pieces that does get finished ...

June Talk by Jan Tillet

My work using colour and texture

Friday 7th June, 7.15 pm

Jan Tillett is a textile designer/maker living and working in Devon. 

A lifelong addiction to textiles began to show more direction while she was studying for an HND in Spatial Design at Somerset College of Arts and Technology. Jan began designing embroidered textiles to place within interior schemes and realised that she was much more interested in the textiles than the interior design! 

Inspired by the colours and textures of the landscape, Jan uses a variety of fabrics and threads to create distinctive textiles for interior and fashion accessories using free machine embroidery techniques. As well as dyeing her own fabrics Jan uses recycled fabrics and remnants in her work. The embroidered pieces are then incorporated with leather and/or fabric to create contemporary, tactile accessories.

Jan has sold her textiles to customers from the UK and abroad and has worked on commissions for interior designers. An experienced teacher, she regularly runs machine embroidery workshops.

http://www.jantillett.co.uk

JETS make mini 'Field' quilts

Our Junior Embroiderers, who range in age from 6 to 13, had a fabulous session making mini field quilts this month.

They each layered a quilt base, then cut out fabric patches, some of which they had painted previously with acrylics.  

A great time was had rummaging through the fabric pile on the floor to choose which colours would look best.

Once the patches were tacked in place, the students stitched round the edges using the sewing machines.  Ruth brought in her manual machine and they enjoyed having a go on that too.

Next month: hand stitching to make the fields come alive with flowers and, apparently, sheep ...

Three of the students went home and bought sewing machines, and one persuaded his Gran to part with hers, and has been busily sewing ever since.

Textured Landscapes

Catherine Lawes gave us a great talk on her textile life and experiences from when she started sewing at a young age in New Zealand, then in the UK - and back again.  Catherine started her career in architecture, then turned to creating textiles, which has been her main occupation ever since.

The talk was illustrated with a huge number of samples of her work - the tables were groaning under the weight of panels and quilts, not to mention her stunning silk and patterned coats.

Catherine Lawes in her Hundertwasser influenced coat

The workshop next day entirely lived up to expectations.  A kit prepared by Catherine of background fabric, wool fabric strips and textured yarns helped us to get on quickly. 

We were aiming for 'abstract landscape', and once happy with the layout (this took far longer than anyone expected), we used wool yarns to stitch the layers in place.

By the end of the session, all that's left to do is to add any finishing touches, and mount/frame our textured landscapes.

  

A really satisfying day!