Member work

Member work

Monday 21 November 2016

Join our JETS group and have fun!



Junior Embroiderers and Textile Students

Are you creative?

Are you over 8 years old and under 17 years?

Join our JETS group and have fun with us!

We do: textile art; printing; dyeing; collage; 
hand and machine stitching ... and much more.

We meet once a month on Saturday mornings in Leamington Spa.

For more information, contact:
Janet Rose
01926 430120





Sunday 20 November 2016

AGM and 'Seasons' workshop

This is a bit of a catch-up on our Branch AGM in September, since we haven't yet shared the photos.

After the necessary business session in the morning and a bring-and-share lunch (always enjoyable!), we got down to the serious stuff of rummaging through our bags of fabrics, fibres and wool, to make a start on creating our 'Autumn' panels.

We had made the frames at the spring members' day, so now for the fun and making a start on the four panels to go in them - one for each season.


Our programme secretaries, Gill and Lucy, had set up a beautiful "nature" table to provide some inspiration, and then gave us some guidance on needle felting a background and making a leather-look material (brown paper, paint, PVA glue, tissue paper) from which to cut out leaf shapes.



No doubt about it, this was play time for grown-ups!



Looking forward to seeing the finished panels ...













Sunday 13 November 2016

Gold work day school with Hanny Newton

Following Hanny Newton's inspiring talk about her journey in embroidery, we enjoyed a lovely gold work day school with her.
Hanny Newton - Copper and tin on wool blend fabric
Hanny Newton - Copper and tin on wool blend fabric
We were given everything we needed on arrival, so that we could get straight into our stitching: a ready-hooped piece of fabric, needles, scissors, and a generous selection of metal and embroidery threads with which to start on our gold work samples - brilliant!  After a short demonstration from Hanny, we embarked on couching our chosen metal thread with a variety of stitches, getting used to manipulating the threads and gradually building up our repertoire sample by sample.






After a bit of practice, we were able to start thinking about the combinations we preferred and how to develop them further.





It was an engrossing and very enjoyable day, and Hanny was helpful and encouraging.  Many of us had been wary of gold work, fearing it was going to be difficult and very exacting.  However, Hanny's contemporary approach, which is freer and more informal, gave us the confidence we needed to experiment and have fun.

We agreed that we had all learned a great deal and went away after a thoroughly satisfying and inspiring day.