Pattern and Place - Open Textile Exhibition

Solihull Arts Complex has just opened their first Open Textile Exhibition in the main galleries. It is on until 28th March so make sure you pop in and take a look. There are some interesting pieces of work from local textile artists, including a number of members of Solihull Embroiderers' Guild.

The Galleries will be closing in August for a few months whilst the Library undergoes some re organisation and building work. The great news is that the Art Gallery will be moving downstairs which will mean that it will be more accessible and have a much greater presence within the Arts Complex.

I have a machine embroidered landscape in the exhibition. The background fabrics have been mono printed to create pattern and then machine stitched.

Bits and Pieces

Life has been busy and I have fitted in stitching 'as and when' but here are a few of things I have been busy with.

This denim bag was made for a charity raffle - front and back views. I hope someone is enjoying using it.

We have started making Travelling Journals at our Inspire group. This is my journal which will be 'travelling' around the group. Quite exciting to see what appears in the book each month.

journal cover (back)

journal cover (front)

This is the piece of work I have put in the journal - a needle felted picture started on a one day workshop with Michala Gyetvai

and this is the first piece of stitching added by a group member -Jan. Stunning!

I am now busy preparing samples for a workshop - Playing with Papers for Stitching and trying to catch up on my Jackie Cardy felting course.

Felting with Jackie Cardy

I have just started an online felting course with Jackie Cardy - see her blog at dogdaisychains.blogsot.co.uk. Although I have done some wet felting before, I have never been particularly happy with the results so I am hoping to pick up some good tips. Jackie is posting some videos - about two per week I think. The first two were very clear and really inspired me to get going. Following Jackie's instructions was certainly less messy and more successful than my previous attempts at wet felting!
Here are my first two pieces - no stitching yet , just basic felt. The stitching videos come later!
The first one is based on pictures from my garden

first - 3 layers of green wool tops

then some flower shapes 

the final piece after wet felting

The second piece is inspired by Autumn leaves

the fibres laid out before felting

the felted piece ready for some stitching

tactile books

Our embroiderers' guild has started a new project for 2014 - making tactile books for blind and partially sighted children. The charity Clearvision  lends these books out to the children, after braille has been added to the stitched pages. Making these books is quite different to the textile books I have made in the past, where the visual look was all important. These books have to be made with quite different concepts in mind.
It has been quite a learning curve thinking of ways to introduce tactile and sound elements into the books.

Here is my first attempt.

It was really fun to make - I hadn't done any knitting for years so it was quite a change making the little knitted jacket. The books are quite addictive once you start - I have two more on the go at the moment!

There will be lots more photos posted on the Solihull E.G. blog over the next few months, so take a look there. solihullembroiderersguild.blogspot.co.uk  

Stitching at Birmingham Library

Birmingham Embroiderers' Guild have joined forces with the new Birmingham Library and are starting to hold monthly stitching sessions at the library. Anyone can join in and if you are not a stitcher but would like to have a go, just go along and there will be someone on hand to get you started. The first session is on the first Saturday in November, starting at 11 am.
For more information, follow the link to Birmingham EG's web site

 http://birminghamembroiderersguild.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/come-stitch-with-us-birmingham.html

A new project

Our Embroiderers' Guild Members' Exhibition is only a few weeks away so I need to get started on a piece fairly quickly. The exhibition is called 'In The Landscape' so I have decide to use some of my photos from Australia as my source of inspiration.
I love the colours in these pictures, taken at the Corung National Park, on the way to Adelaide

 

I am using wool tops and various other fibres to felt a background onto a wool blanket. I started felting with a hand tool but will use the embellisher machine to finish felting the fibres down.

 

 

Now I am beginning to add stitch

 

 

Just hope I can finish in time!

 

 

Roots Moving On

Our Running Stitch exhibition came down this week. Thank you to all those who came to view and left some lovely comments. After a quick change of fixings (mirror plate to D rings) the pieces will be going off to Heartlands Hospital for a few weeks, then Good Hope Hospital and finally ending up back in Solihull at Solihull Hospital, sometime early next year.
As I won't be seeing my pictures for a while, I  made sure I took some photos.

Walking with granddad across the fields at Thurlaston

Walking with granddad 2

 

The long climb - The Lickey Hills

 

Postcards from my past - based on the style of the WW1 embroidered postcards

 

 

 The Portrait



As these were very personal pieces of work, most incorporating family photos, they were not for sale. The black and white embroidered pieces included fabric copies of photos taken by my father so are particularly important to me and I will not be parting with those.