May meeting - South African textiles with Catherine Leighton

We were very pleased to welcome Catherine, who brought along a wonderful range of embroidery and other pieces of work which had been inspired by her interest in South African textiles.  She is a regular visitor to South Africa and told us of her love for such a colourful country, and for its tribal arts using hand dyed cloth.

 

Catherine told us of the Kaross embroidery project, which was founded as a way of bringing creative opportunities to mainly rural women.  Their work reflects a passion for colour and for African culture.  One of their products is hand-embroidered cushion covers and Catherine showed us some she had stitched in the style of Kaross.

She then passed around more of her beautifully hand-stitched work for everyone to admire.

Catherine also enjoys making beautiful hand-stitched bags, using space-dyed fabrics:

 

Many thanks to Catherine for such an informative and interesting talk.

Glossop EG at Hollingworth's Festival on the Green

On 12 May members of our committee manned a stall at Hollingworth's Festival on the Green, an event whose aim is to provide low-cost entertainment for all the family.  There are lots of activities on the day, with many craft stalls.

The festival was a great success, enhanced by the glorious sunshine.  Lots of children and their parents stopped at the Guild stall to admire the work on sale, try a bit of stitching or to talk about what we do at Glossop EG.  Thanks to the committee donating their time, we have been able to add to our branch funds. 

Lost and Found workshop with Sarah Burgess - 8 May

This was a wonderful and stimulating workshop with Sarah Burgess, where we printed and stitched on paper and cloth .

Sarah brought examples of her own beautiful work, explaining how it was done, and then gave a demonstration with lots of advice on how to get different types of print.  With this inspiration everyone quickly got started with making their own prints on different types of paper and on fabric.

We were asked to take our own 'found' objects to the workshop for making the prints.  A wide range of objects were used: leaves, feathers, gloves and keys.

Once the prints had been made they were arranged on a length of backing fabric, which could then be embellished with stitch, paint and other found objects to create a unique piece of work.

You can see the different styles of work and how every one is unique.  

We all had a thoroughly enjoyable day.  A big 'thank you' to Sarah for making this possible.  We all went home with plans on how to complete our work.