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.

ROOTS

The running Stitch exhibition is now up and 'running'. If you would like to see it, it is on until Saturday 5th October at Solihull Library Arts Complex

A sample board of a piece of work from every member. I have really enjoyed making postcard sized pieces of work, some of which are for sale on the sales table, along with cards and hand dyed threads.

Time now to relax a bit - although I do need to start thinking about a piece for the Embroiderers' Guild Exhibition in November (only a few weeks away!)

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



Nearly Ready

Only one day to go before setting up the Running Stitch Exhibition 'ROOTS' at Solihull Library Arts Complex. Have just been finishing off some cards and postcards to sell using the mono printed fabrics I printed last week. Here are some of the finished pieces.

postcards

 

more postcards

 

landscape cards

a few more

some black and white landscapes

 

Roots - An Exhibition by Running Stitch

The Running Stitch Textile Group is 10 Years Old and  will be holding an exhibition of new work from 24th September - 5th October at the Solihull Library Arts Complex, Solihull B91 3RG.
I have been busy creating some work based upon old family pictures, including several photographs taken by my father, a keen photographer.

This is one of my favourite photographs, taken by my father and shows my grandfather and myself walking across the fields near to Thurlaston village. One of my pieces for the exhibition is based upon this photograph.

I have been mono printing lots of fabric to use in the larger pieces of work and am busy using the left over pieces to make a few cards to sell at the exhibition.

They make great mini landscapes and with a bit of stitching added, can be quite effective.

 

I did start to run out of black and white fabric so got carried away printing some green and blue samples - not sure if I will have time to use these but they will come in useful some time!

 

Just need to sort out some packs of hand dyed threads now and then I will be ready.

 

 

If you miss the exhibition at the library, it will then be travelling round the local hospitals, starting with Heartlands sometime in October, followed by Good Hope and Solihull in the new year.

The Festival of Quilts 2013

Another successful Festival of Quilts at Birmingham's N.E.C. with so much to see (and buy!).
My favourite displays this year were the Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge quilts and the travelling exhibition - Beneath the Southern Sky.
The Contemporary Quilt group Challenge was entitled "Horizons". Here are a few of my favourites.

 

The travelling exhibition "Beneath the Southern Sky"  featured the landscape and traditions of Australia and New Zealand. There is a web site for the exhibition if you want to see all the quilts, which is well  worth a look - www.beneathsouthernsky.com  

 

These are some of my favourites -

 

 

Cross Land and Sea by Jan Rowe

 

These remind me of the little penguins on Philip Island

 

 

 A Wilful Lavish land by June Buxton

 

 Together, Sharing this Great Land by Sandy Corry

 

 

 

 

Threads of Kata Tjuta by Christine Dowell

 

 

Isolation by Anne Jolly

 

Staircase to the Moon by Stephanie Knudsen

 

There were lots of other wonderful pieces - just too many to mention!

 

There were plenty of demonstrations to watch and the two which caught my eye were Transfer painting with Mary Gamester and Hilary Beattie's "preparing your palette"

I have tried transfer painting before but have never been happy with the results. However, the colours in Mary's work were much less garish than I have achieved before so I was temped and bought some of her transfer paints and her book - Transfer Painting.  I also bought the new book by Hilary Beattie - Book 1: Preparing Your Palette with lots of ideas for colouring, printing and mark making onto fabric. So lots to 'play' with when I get time. 

 

Gelli printing

I did treat myself to a Gelli printing plate at the West Midlands  Regional Day in June - so thought I had better have a go with it and see if it is really as good as the reviews say it is!

It certainly is easy to use and clean so does encourage you to get it out and have a go .
I used a selection of home made stamps, drawing directly onto the inked plate, commercial stamps, plastic doilies and lace to make the prints . I used acrylic paints with a bit of fabric medium for all the prints.

this print used home made stamps made from funky foam, wooden bird shapes from card making supplies, hand stitched flower stamp and a bit of drawing into the paint.

mainly mono printing - drawing into the paint with a plastic glue brush and a wooden flower stamp

A double print - end of a cork pressed into the paint on the first print. marks with a plastic glue spreader on the second print

The centre of the print is from a home made funky foam printing block. the flowers are from some wooden card making supplies.

 

 A print from a commercial rubbing block

Two prints using home made flower printing blocks - daisies cut from a mouse mat

print from a plastic doily - these proved really successful ( a charity shop buy that's definitely worth looking out for)

More plastic doily prints

 

A print from lace

 

The gelli plate is certainly easy to use. It makes a good print with some well defined detail and it cleans up really well. The only drawback is that it is only A4 size and with textiles, a larger print is often needed. I would definitely look out for the plastic doilies -they are great for printing.