Creating A Patchwork Meadow in Stitch

This is a public project being run by the charity Plantlife which helps to promote the conservation of our native wild plants. They are asking anyone interested in any type of textile technique to produce a 15cm textile square depicting one of our wild flora. These squares will then be mounted together to form a giant 'Patchwork Meadow' and will be on display at the Wild North Festival in June 2013 (and possibly other venues around the country after that). There's lots more information at www.plantlife.org.uk but if you want to take part - the deadline for sending in your pieces is the end of March 2013, so start stitching!

 

Solihull Embroiderers' Guild are hoping to send in as many squares as we can. Here is my first piece I've completed this week.

 

I am hoping to complete some more squares, but with so many other projects on the go I don't know if I will have the time!

 

 

 

 



Welcoming The Athletes of The World

Welcoming The Athletes of The World

 

 

I went to see the exhibition of stitched postcards produced by all the branches of the Embroiderers' Guild "Welcoming The Athletes of The World". Each country taking part in the Olympic games in the summer was represented by a strip of hand made cards (over 200 strips). The exhibition has been at a number of venues around the country and I was able to see the cards at Artrix in Bromsgrove. They were absolutely stunning with an incredible range of techniques and talent on display.
If you get a chance to see the postcards, you won't be disappointed!
I tried to choose some favourites but it was impossible, so here are a few random photos.

 



 

 

 

This is the strip of cards made by my EG Branch -Solihull. We were given Palau as our country to study, which is a group of tiny islands in the Pacific Ocean. No one had heard of them before!

 

 

 

These are the two postcards I made. The sea horse was machine stitched on dissolvable fabric and the second card was hand felted and hand stitched.

 

Using those dyed fabrics!

Have been busy using some of my tray dyed and ice dyed fabrics to make note books and packs of hand dyed fabric and threads to sell on our Embroiderers' Guild stand at The Allsorts Craft Fair in Solihull Arts Complex , the first weekend in November.

Here are some of the sketch book covers - strips of fabric, machined over with stitch patterns and free machine embroidery.

 

A guild workshop

Spent yesterday leading an Embroiderers' guild workshop. We had a very messy time, playing with paints, printing on fabric, making printing blocks and experimenting with markal paint sticks.

Here are some interesting pieces produced on the day. Carolyn printed a lovely Autumnal piece. Sue's piece was very colourful.
Everyone went home with a lot of samples and ideas for making printing blocks from funky foam, recycled plastic, string etc.