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!!

Moon Series, Tulles and Sheers

I went on a fabulous workshop with Ineke Berlyn yesterday and made this scene with some of my hand-dyed fabrics, some shared fabrics and some sheers. It is on a base of white organza with some pink very fine grade tulle over the top machine-stitched in purple and gold threads. I am very pleased with the result and want to do more utilising this technique.

Here is a picture which shows the layers better, but I am waiting for some sun to come out. The picture is in an acrylic frame and can stand on the window sill to get the full effect of the sun shining through (some day soon please!). Here is the class in action - we are the Embroiderers' Guild.

...and here is my new Bernina (pride and joy) in action at 6.30 this morning because I couldn't wait to finish it!

I have also been working at the Moon Series and have posted a picture of the first patch of 12 monthly Lunar influenced pictures for the following year's slow cloth. The moon is shining above the Pitons which are two very magnificent mountains which rise abruptly out of the sea in Lucia where we were in January (see last posts). I have put the Pitons in cotton velvet which feels lovely and the moon is discharged with bleach on a cotton woven fabric background.

This year I am collecting various patterns in photo and sketch for future use. This is a photo of our Victorian hall tiles which would be a patchworker's dream!

Here is the window of our front door. You don't need to go far for inspiration!

Then if you've got a moment click on this link to watch a heart warming video set to music by Tonya Davis with art by Andrea Dorfman :)