Our joint exhibition with Lytham St Annes Branch, in the North Pier Theatre, North Pier Blackpool is almost upon us. Lets hope we get a great many visitors to see our work over the weekend of the 9th/ 10th & 11th of August.
“Our annual Strawberry Tea was held on the 8th July. Around twenty members attended and, in between strawberries, cream, scones and Kathryn’s Vanilla Mouse, we had a preview of some of the items which will be on show at the Exhibition in August. (If you want to see what they looked like come along in August!) These had been brought in to “dress” the set as the Gazette sent their photographer to take some pictures for the Eve article which appeared on the 16th. A great way to publicise both the Branch and the exhibition with Lytham St Annes.
We also took the opportunity to say thank you to Marion Miller who has recently resigned from her role as catering supremo by presenting her with a gift token. Marion will be a hard act to follow but we will do our best to maintain her high standards. “
Our speaker this month was Chris Cannon who talked to us about her ‘Passion with Plants’. As well as a PowerPoint presentation this was a very hands-on evening.
Chris explained about her passion for plants and showed us a wide variety of plants that represented different features of interest for interpretation into stitch.
She gave us all a selection of photographs and got us to focus on looking at marks and recreating them in pen or pencil on a range of papers, making sure that we did not fall into the trap of trying to do a representational drawing of the plant itself.
Chris is a member of Preston Threads, a Lancashire based group of textile artists. Her plant based, hand stitched pieces , with this group have recently been exhibited at the NEC and the Voirrey. (Two members of Blackpool Branch are also members of this group).
Below you can see some of the approaches that Chris uses in her own work, hand stitched pieces and sketchbook work and how we all got on with the tasks that she set us on the night.
After we had made some marks on paper we then thought about how we could use to stitch to represent the marks. There are some really interesting results. It was a really fun evening.
