May Meeting

We were pleased to welcome Margaret Steeden with her presentation "Moving On" and enjoyed a walk through her life in textiles. 

Margaret is a member of Textile 21 and  believes that art is an expression of one’s innermost feelings and thoughts as well as responses to observation of the natural world. Fabrics, combined with mixed media and stitch, allow her to explore fully texture, colour, shape and form as they have such tactile natures.

Her work is currently based on experimentation with the creation of new surfaces and backgrounds that allow her to be specific as well as control the colour, texture and fibres that she is aiming for.

Primarily, Margaret uses the inspiration gained from nature and the flora and fauna all around us. Her work can be characterised by either hand or machine stitching that usually adds the final surface embellishment to her work. Margaret exhibits widely throughout the northwest with the several groups to which she belongs.

Many of us could identify with some of the stages Margaret described as she has progressed with her work.

    Buying items from shows and wondering what to do with them

                 Being a bit of a butterfly and trying lots of different techniques  and other scenarios

Margaret brought with her a stunning collection of works she had "moved on" with over the years and it was fascinating to see how her work has progressed whilst she still  returns to traditional techniques in some of her pieces.

A stunning poppy using silk and dyes

Textured Sandstone

Glorious colours using different fabrics

A memory box incorporating family photographs

More of Margaret's work can be found at: www littleworksofart.blogspot.co.uk

Regional Day

North West Regional Day this year was hosted by Rochdale Branch and held at the Norton Grange Hotel in Rochdale.

Those of us from Blackpool who attended had a very enjoyable day, meeting up with old friends and generally enjoying the exhibitions and of course visiting the traders!  

The morning speaker was Gillian Lonergan from The Co-operative Heritage Trust who gave an informative presentation about the significance and history of banners within the Co-operative movement, which of course has it's home in Rochdale.

More about their fascinating work can be found at:

http://www.archive.coop/support-us/co-operative-heritage-trust

 
The Co-operative Women's Guilds and their history 



and the growth of co-operative societies was also covered and provided us with lots of information, which along with an opportunity to see some of the banners from the collection made for an interesting morning.

Following a hot buffet lunch we all settled down to listen to our afternoon speaker Anne Brooke.
Anne is a textile artist based in Yorkshire and certainly no one was taking a post lunch dose as she delivered an entertaining story of her life in textiles so far.  From a dad who said "NO TO ART" to her mum who was very supportive of her work to the present day selection of her work this was certainly a talk full of interest and humour.







Anne uses old maps and lots of repurposed papers in her work which give some wonderful effects



More of Anne's work can be seen here:

http://www.annebrooke.co.uk/gallery.html

Inspirations

Whilst on holiday recently I kept on taking pictures of trees and thought they might make suitable subjects for embroidery, so I thought I would share a few of them with you.  Feel free to copy and use them if you would like to.

Encaustic Wax Techniques

In April we welcomed Sue Tyldesley  who revealed the many wonderful results to be achieved with "The wonders of using encaustic Wax techniques with textiles and stitch"

During the evening Sue shared her experience and demonstrated the many interesting ways this can transform pieces of textile work.

Sue brought  several examples of her beautiful work to share with us and generated lots of discussion about new ideas we can all try!

Then came the moment we had all been waiting for - a chance to play with all the tools of the trade!