Monday 27 June 2011

Embroiderers Unite!

 This Saturday our branch of The Embroiderers' Guild was hosting the Regional Day in Wombourne, Staffordshire. I am a new member and was interested to see how it would be.
There was the usual reports and business dealings first, and considering the temptations that awaited us we were all very well behaved through all of that.
As soon as that was over it was flies round a honey pot time. Three hundred women clamouring around the Traders' Stalls eager to get their hands on metal shim, paper sculpy, silk fibres and cloths, felts in all  the colours of the rainbow and those in between, transfoils, threads of every sort, fabrics, dyes, paints, stamps and scores of other goodies to feed the addiction so many of us hide have.
Later, after lunch, the guest speaker was Maggie Grey, who delivered a delightful talk on Walls and Frescoes.

She presented a slide show combining her travels, inspirations and resulting work in mixed media and textiles. It was both fascinating and entertaining. She mixed humour and information brilliantly and explained some of her ways of translating images into stitch.
I have a couple of her books and have long admired her as a lead in her field and what I have seen of her Workshop on The Web has been inspiring.
I love the image of Che Guevara with a poodle she has produced -  she says, "I thought he needed a poodle to bring him down a peg or two." That really made me chuckle!
She also brought a lot of her work along so that we could see it up close and dare I say, touch some of it (irresistible).

After all of this were the awards. To complement the Maggie Grey talk was a competition entitled "Fragments and Frescoes". I had entered a piece, really in order to support our branch of the Guild and to help create a reasonable sized exhibition.
Here it is "Arborist's Fragments" (A3 size as specified):
Well I was so surprised and amazed that it won 3rd Prize! Wow! I've never entered a competition before - never had the courage! Anyway I was very pleased with my certificate and a lovely big box of Anchor machine threads, perles, embroidery threads, needles and such like. I still can't believe that Maggie Grey judged it as she did. Purr, purr.
I think I might have another go next year!!

20 comments:

  1. congratulations and celebrations!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congratulations!!! A well deserved award.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations Clare, it is on Maggie's blog too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well done! Sounds like an excellent day.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Congratulations, it is a lovely piece. Sounds like the rest of the day was good too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Congratulations!! You deserve it.
    Take care

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a great day out and congratulations on your prize! It's well deserved. :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Congratulations, well deserved.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Well done on winning a prize-the piece is lovely-i hope to see it at our next show and tell. I know how you feel about winning something the first time you enter-it certainly gives you a great buzz. I hope you enter more as I think your work is really creative.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well done - what a lovely and well deserved surprise! Sounds like a fabulous day.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Well done - what a lovely and well deserved surprise! Sounds like a fabulous day.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Congratulations Clare - I love your Fragments piece and am not at all surprised you won a prize. Enjoy your goodies.

    ReplyDelete
  13. congrats on your awardxxyou deserved it..yr work looked greatxx

    ReplyDelete
  14. Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurvly pictures

    ReplyDelete
  15. Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurvly pictures

    ReplyDelete
  16. Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurvly pictures

    ReplyDelete
  17. Yes, yes, yes - of course you should have a go for it next year too!

    And this very beautiful and special work of yours has absolutely deserved the price! Congratulations, dear Clare!

    And how nice to receive that big box with embroidery material!

    I can imagine that this day was truly great and interesting! Lovely!

    ReplyDelete

your comments are always appreciated - I enjoy reading them. You don't need to have a blog to leave a comment, you can select the name/URL option and fill in just your name instead of a blog link.