February Informal... a day out!

We met at Rheged for our informal meeting this month, to look at their current exhibition, WOW! Wonder of Wool.
It's a fascinating collection of work, some traditional, but mostly innovative, clever, witty pieces using this versatile material in all kinds of ways. Knitted benches, sculptural pieces, and my favourites, the knitted houses, representing the buildings where horrific poisonings took place!. The houses themselves are beautifully made, and it was quite a shock to read the details of what went on inside these addresses!

 It was one of those bright, crisp, lovely days we get in Cumbria, if we are lucky, and it was really pleasant to relax over lunch after the exhibition.

No photographs allowed, I'm afraid, but this link will take you to the Wonder of Wool site, where you can get a glimpse of what is on offer.

We planned another visit, for today. We intended to meet in Carlisle at Tullie House for the 'Little Black Dress' exhibition.  This time the weather defeated us,so maybe another time..................

January Meeting Wessex Stitchery

Sally Evans has an amazing knowledge of all kinds of embroidery, and in our January meeting she introduced us to Wessex Stitchery. A counted thread technique  'invented' in the 1920's/30's  , it is suitable to use on different weights of fabric, and with almost any threads, as long as they are bright. Once the basic stitches are mastered, the possibilities are endless.

Some of us had not heard of Wessex Stitchery until now, and it is interesting to note that the comprehensive book about this technique,not very old, is very hard to come by, now............ one copy on Amazon is for sale for £326!!!!


Below are some of our efforts , and also some of Sally's  more finished work in Wessex Stitchery.

The Sun came out!

Thursday 5th January 2012

The first meeting of 2012 was our informal in Threlkeld, and the weather was awful when everyone left home. It's been so long since we've seen the sun in these parts that we hardly recognised it when it made its appearance, late morning!

It was good to get together after the Christmas and New Year break, and catch up with all our news, enjoy a shared lunch and see what others are doing in the way of sewing projects.

              We have our  postcards ready, now;  our assigned country was Lesotho. 

Also completed; Val's Lutradur book from the November  workshop;

Next meeting, in two weeks, at The Friends' meeting House in Keswick.

First Informal of 2012!

Happy New Year!

Just a reminder that our first informal meeting of the the new year will be Thursday 5th January, at Pat's house in Threlkeld. Bring some sewing, along with either your lunch or something to share, and something for the raffle.

See you there!

Christmas Party 2011

What a lovely festive atmosphere greeted us at the Horse and Farrier in Threlkeld when we arrived for our Christmas lunch. It was a return visit, as we were all so impressed last year that we had very little discussion about where to go this time, This traditional Lakeland inn had been beautifully decorated, as you will see from the pictures.

The food was delicious, too, with a varied menu, and very good service.  

We altered the proceedings a little this year; instead of each making a gift to exchange, we made a card instead, and each received one of those. Lovely they were, too! The aim is to keep them all safe until our exhibition in July, and have them on show, then.I didn't photograph them; they'll have their first showing at the Moot Hall. 

Our lunch was a lovely, relaxed and comfortable occasion, though we were missing some of of our members through illness.

Happy Christmas, everyone!

Knitting and Stitching Show 2011 Harrogate

It amuses me to think of all the stitchers in the North of England heading for Harrogate last week, from every guild and group. Lots of our members were there, mainly on the Thursday, I think, and as ever, there was almost too much to see. It's a bit overwhelming, and takes great determination to get round everything, even over the two days that some of us had. Two of our group did a box-weaving workshop, and I was allowed to see the results over dinner on Thursday evening. A photo may appear here , who knows? I did Hilary Hollingsworth's Bayeux Stitch workshop, which I found very interesting, and although I only managed to get a tiny bit of the cartoon image finished, I do intend to work on this more. Again, I'll post a picture when there's something to see!
The weather got worse over the course of the show. I went in to the  Hall on Friday, while it was a crisp, dry day, and emerged a few hours later to horrible wind and rain, managing to get thoroughly wet, twice, on the way to the station. I know it got even worse on the Saturday. And people think we do this for pleasure!

I particularly liked the work by Ten-Plus Textiles,

Linda Young

Caroline Turner

 The Prestonpans Tapestry, two panels here,

 Seven men, and Highland charge,

MA work by a student from The University of Cumbria, whose name I will add shortly,

and the stunning exhibition of work by Beryl Dean.

An exhausting but rewarding trip, and there may be thoughts from other members added soon.

Lutradur Books....Some inspiring work on felt...and Newsletter.....

Making Books with Lutradur

For our November meeting, we dabbled with Lutradur, the very versatile spun-bond 'fabric' and experimented with the soldering iron.

The Lutradur had already been dyed with silk paints, and we used the sheets to construct a book with folded pocket pages and a cover. A soldering iron was used to cut out shapes, either free-hand or drawing round a metal shape.   

The front covers were decorated  with a mixture hand of machine embroidery, beads, copper sheeting, fine wires, and some of them were soldered round the edges.

The techniques used to construct and decorate the books were  some of those developed by Lynda Monk, and by Margaret Beal. Most of the creations weren't quite finished at the end of the day, but hopefully they will be, soon.

This weekend, I visited the Country Living Christmas Fair in Glasgow. It's always a good start to Christmas shopping, and as usual there lots of inspiring hand-made goods, many of them textiles. But my very favourite work was that by Moy Mackay, who usually shows her work in galleries, and not in shows. She creates astonishing landscapes using machine embroidery on hand-made felt. Her pictures are truly beautiful. I thought i'd seen her work somewhere, and in fact, she has exhibited at Percy House in Cockermouth. If you get the chance to see any of her pictures, do go along. Here are some images from her 2012 calendar.

November Newsletter from Zena;

Keg newsletter

                                                                      Nov 2011

Our next formal meeting will be at the Horse & Farrier Inn at Threlkeld for Christmas lunch, on December 8th. It’s at 12.00 for 12.30 and if you have not already done so you need to decide if you would like 2 courses for £11.95 0r 3 courses for £14.95. Meals will be ordered on the day, but we need to know definite numbers by 1 Dec. They also need to be paid for by that date, so we can just give the pub one cheque on the day of the meal

The embroidered cards that we are making to exchange as pressies, could you put a greeting and date on them as we would like to display them at our exhibition on 6 July 2012 at the Moot Hall in Keswick.

Our next informal meeting is on 1 Dec at Pat’s house, Corvus at Trelkeld. The colour for the raffle is yellow/gold or orange, if you could bring some buttons, fabric, ribbon or threads, to give you some ideas.

Bring your sewing or embroidery to do whilst chatting and something to share for lunch,

The informals for next year, weather permitting, will be 5 Jan, 2 Feb and 1 Mar, again

at Pat’s house.

There is a North West Region Summer School at Alston Hall, Longridge, Preston from 19 to 22 July 2012. Tutors are Janet Browne –Stitching Journeys, Sheila Smith-Surface Texture in Stitch with Felt and Katie Pirson – Wonderful  Whitework

You need to decide by the start of next year.

Any queries Zena Smedley 016973 71023