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!