November meeting - Christmas lunch

Our last meeting of the year had a festive feel with members bringing along their contributions to our Christmas buffet and everyone enjoying their lunch very much, especially the meringues!  And of course it was a great opportunity to catch up with friends.

After lunch we were shown how to make a crazy patchwork angel, enthusiastically led by Chris Harris.  Here are some of the angels created.....

We can now look forward to seeing the completed angels when they return at our January meeting.

 

Alongside the meeting and lunch, there was a display of the beautiful work produced by Sue Taylor, a former member who sadly is no longer able to stitch.  

This is some of the work which Sue created when she was working for her City and Guilds certificate and diploma.

At our next meeting in January (no meeting in December) we shall be making Bushkiri bags, made from a folded, embroidered square of fabric.  Here are some examples to inspire you:-

 

And, finally, Glossop EG is very proud that the work of three members was displayed in Members' Challenge exhibition at the Knitting & Stitching Show in Harrogate.  The theme is 'Underfoot':-

stitched by Christine Bardsley

  

stitched by Joy Newington

stitched by Liz Smith

The theme of this year's challenge is 'Life's rich pattern'.  The closing date is 28 February 2019 so, if you haven't already started, you have just enough time to stitch and submit your own entry!

October - Members' work on other projects

As at most meetings, the Travelling Books were available for any members who wished to add their work to a book of their choice.  

Here are some of the recent contributions:-

 

                           

Once all the pages have been filled, the owner of the book takes it home and can spend hours and hours admiring its contents!

Following our 3D needle felting workshop in October, held by Hannah Dodd, most of the members remembered to bring their finished birds to the meeting.  And to demonstrate what a great day we had, there was a collection of fantastic creatures, including a small flock of robins.  

Some of us are already looking forward to the next needle-felting workshop!

Joy Madden - So you want to sew?

At our October meeting we were visited by Joy Madden who was joined by some friends from a textile group who meet each Monday at Poynton Community Centre.  Joy is a member of Manchester EG, and she told us that she has taken her City & Guilds Creative Embroidery twice!

The title of Joy's talk was 'So you want to sew?' and we were certainly given plenty of inspiration.

The Poynton group includes beginners as well as experienced stitchers, and they brought along a wonderful selection of work for us to admire.  Joy talked about the various techniques used in the samples.  Some of them were familiar and some were not, such as the use of gelliplate printing and encaustic wax.  Their projects are sometimes driven by mystery parcels which contain a selection of materials - similar to the sample packs on our own sales table.

We also heard about Gerald The Juggler who joined the group initially to make himself a set of new juggling balls (see below) before moving onto other projects.

Here is a selection of the group's work:-

Joy's entertaining talk introduced us to lots of new techniques and materials and generated a huge amount of enthusiasm - everyone left with lots of ideas for new projects.  Thank you, Joy!

3D needle felting

A group of Glossop branch members have spent today on a 3D needle felting workshop led by Hannah Dodd.  And what a fabulous day they had, with excellent tuition and one-to-one guidance - Hannah is very generous with her advice, and her cake!  

Everyone received step by step instructions for making a bird, any bird - could be a well-known songbird, a bird of prey, a bird of paradise!

Here are all the birds created throughout the day - wouldn't you love to see them in your garden?  Most are still awaiting some finishing touches, but you can look forward to admiring them at our next meeting on 31 October.

September meeting - AGM and Rose Bowl

After the formalities of the AGM all members voted for their favourite entry in the Rose Bowl competition.  This year the theme was based on our Rainbow Squares and members were challenged to complete a new work with a neutral colour scheme.  Here are the entries from our talented members:-

 

So many beautiful entries made it difficult to choose a favourite, but Christine Bardsley was voted the winner (her work is the one above the hare) and she was presented with the Rose Bowl which will be hers for the coming year.

Other work was displayed by those members who didn't produce a Rainbow Square.  Here are the 'transformed tins' which show their own story displayed in a tin can:-

- and the tins were accompanied by some beautiful shisha work:-

Finally we had a few words from Hannah Dodd who is running a workshop - 3D needle felting - at her studio in Broadbottom on Wednesday, 17 October from 10am until 3pm.  We are really looking forward to being shown how to produce fantastic needle felted birds and insects.  Here is one of Hannah's birds, and one of her 3D felted landscapes:-

You can now look forward to the next blog post showing the fantastical creatures we have made!

Glossop Suffrage event

As 2018 represents one hundred years of some women being able to vote, Glossop Arts Project felt they should celebrate the event.  They invited a number of local groups, including the Embroiderers' Guild, to take part in creating a banner to commemorate the centenary of women's suffrage.  It became a group project with each group working one of the panels.

A small number of Glossop EG members volunteered to take part with the banner worked in the suffragette colours of purple, green and white and here is the result:-

The banner was displayed in Norfolk Square in Glossop and photographed for the local paper, then everyone who participated marched with the banner to the Labour Club, which will be its home.  

After the celebration members of Glossop Arts Project took some beautiful flowers to the grave of Florence French who is buried in Glossop Cemetery.  Florence actively campaigned for votes for women and was a leading campaigner for women's suffrage in Glossop.  In 1906 she was one of the founders of Glossop Labour Club. 

This was a rewarding local community event and all who contributed felt it was a fitting tribute to our local suffragist.

Summer Lunch and visit to Chatsworth

After our wonderful Summer Lunch we set off for a wander around Chatsworth House. We were looking for inspiration for textile work for our exhibition to be displayed in the Carriage House restaurant early next year.  But - Chris Harris and Christine Bardsley were much more interested in adding their work to the Woven in Time weaving loom in the State Drawing Room:-

As most of you will know, Chatsworth is rich in artistic inspiration and so the photographs shown here can only hint at what is within the house.  Hopefully they may give you ideas, or prompt you to visit and record those things which you find inspirational.

This sculpture of a leaping hare is in the central courtyard and was created, I think, by Barry Flanagan.  Beneath it is a model of Chatsworth House.

Here are the Emperor fountain and the famous violin painted on a door:-

On the left is a display of wall-mounted china plates, and on the right is a tabletop with a beautiful design made from different types of stone.

Here are some of the glorious tassels used to decorate the curtains and windows:-

These are the hot-air balloons which took off from the Chatsworth estate during last weekend's country fair:-

All of this without venturing outside the House or looking around the garden.  Oh, and did I mention the farmyard, the Orangery, the waterfall or the bridge....?

July meeting - Members' show and tell

At our last meeting of the year all members were asked to bring along a piece of work and talk about it.  As usual we had a wonderful selection of embroidery and textile art and some of the work is shown below.

At the top is Joy Newington's work from the fibre fusion workshop, with further embellishment, and at the bottom left is Mavis Lee's work, from the same workshop, beautifully presented in a glass frame.  On the right is Anne Shaw's intriguing work on the theme of 'Planets':-

On the left this grid shows Sheila Conchie's casket (I think we should ask her to do a workshop, don't you?) which she made at Summer School.  On the right is Valerie Grant's beautifully embroidered stole worked in Pearsall's silks and currently used as a communion stole.  Below is a close-up showing the detail of the embroidery:-

Here is a photo showing Allison James' landscapes: layered fabric embellished with hand and machine stitch.  Beautiful colours.  And below is Judi Brown's hand dyed silk clutch bag with hand and machine stitching:-

This is Nikki Parmenter's textile work based on a theme of small worlds - you could spend an hour looking at it and still find something new!

Chris Harris's work is based on a photograph taken in the garden, using a Japanese method known as Momigami - or kneaded paper.  The technique is based on crumpling paper by hand and then stitch is added:-

Pat Thomas brought along a hand-made cushion on which she has stitched some of the dozens? hundreds? of small triangles which she made by hand:-

Ann worked this hand felted landscape, based on a photograph of hills in Scotland, whilst she was at North West Region summer school:-

And Belinda completed the display of work to be proud of, and showed her beautifully decorated book cover:-

As always, this show and tell meeting was a great success and we were all able to appreciate each others' work.  Aren't we a talented bunch?!