End of year catch up!

It seems a while since the last post, so this is a good opportunity for a catch up at the end of 2016.
It has been a busy and enjoyable year for the branch and 2017 promises to be another year to remember.

Our pre-Christmas get together in early December seems like an age ago now! we spent a pleasant evening chatting and stitching whilst enjoying our coffee and mince pies.

 Wonky Christmas trees - a good way to use all those scraps of fabric

 

We recently enjoyed a Saturday morning sketching in Stanley Park and look forward to seeing some new works based on these sketches early in the New Year.

April 2017 sees our bi-annual exhibition to be held again at Blackpool Central Library 

New projects in the pipeline for 2017 too - more news about these in January 

Liz Cooksey

Liz Cooksey was our guest for our first October meeting. Liz gave an inspiring talk about her work and how it has evolved over the years.
Her work with wire started as quite large pieces but has now become quite intricate and delicate.
She brought along some super examples of her work to share with us.

More details about her work can be found on her website:  www.lizcooksey.com

Book making

Members Day this month was a book making workshop with Sue, who brought along some gorgeous examples of her books

and we couldn't wait to get started

We had lots of fabric and yarn and started to create our book covers. Some of us used machine stitching and some preferred more relaxing hand stitching. We got so engrossed we had to be reminded to eat our lunch!  , We refuelled for the afternoon and enjoyed some delicious cakes too. Most of us got close to the finishing line and ready to add pages.

I know some of us are keen to use these for our "Mystery Book" project in the coming months so hopefully all will be finished and complete with pages in time for this.

New Season - new themes for stitch nights

Here is an update on our programme for the coming season with a bit more detail about the format of stitch nights.

We have eight stitch nights through the year and these have been divided to give us lots of variety.

We will have four presentation nights ( 31 October, 30 January, 27 March, 26 June) where members will show the work of an artist or textile artist they enjoy and talk briefly about the works. It is then up to us to decide how (or if) we would like to produce a piece using this artist  as inspiration.

On the remaining four nights we can bring along any pieces to either continue working or just for a show and tell.
(28 November, 27 February, 24 April, 10 July)

At the end of the season there will be a show and tell so we can share our pieces and compare them with the original artist works.

To run alongside this will be our Mystery Books - if you can think of a great name for these books please let us know!
These will work like the travelling books but there will be a mystery theme each month to be interpreted in as many ways possible.
More explanation to follow - those of you coming to the book making workshop may like to make a book for this project.

Summer

Enjoy the summer break - next meeting is 12th September followed by a bookmaking workshop with Sue on Saturday September 17th.

Strawberry Tea and Competitions

Blackpool Branch always enjoy a good party, and this years Strawberry Tea provided the ideal opportunity. As usual our members were very generous with their donations to the buffet which provided a great focus for the evening.

                                            

Our annual competitions were open to members and give us the opportunity to view and vote for the entries.

It was great to see Marge in good spirits and full of enthusiasm for the entries for the Marge Quinn Award.  As always Marge had words of praise and encouragement for the newer members of the branch, and found it hard to choose a winner.
Congratulations to Joan for winning this year:

Apologies for the light shining on the picture

Marge also decided this year to award an additional prize to Jan for her lovely needle case

Members voted for the Chairman's Award and this year Ellen was the winner

Several members had produced pieces to be submitted for the upcoming Capability Brown exhibition at Gawthorpe Hall.  More details and photographs of the exhibition will be posted soon.

Emily Notman Workshop

Our members workshop in June was led by Emily Notman. Emily was one of our speakers last year, so we are already familiar with her lovely intricate stitched landscapes.
We spent a messy morning colouring all kinds of fabric with emulsion pain, ink and lots of other mediums, before beginning work on a small landscape as an introduction to the techniques.

Dyed fabrics

                                        

                                                 

During the afternoon, working with a "bondaweb sandwich" we assembled  larger landscapes and then spent a lovely quiet afternoon hand stitching and adding embellishments.

    

By the end of the session most of us had a complete or almost complete piece to take away after a very enjoyable and relaxing workshop

                                                

                                                 

Of course we had biscuits too!

More about Emily's work can be found here:  www.emilynotman.co.uk