Inbetweeners - Anne's Lovely Box

Where does she find the time? 

Here is a box that Anne Brooke made as a demo piece for her collage box workshop. 

Anne uses a lot of wallpaper samples in her work as it is quite strong and flexible, good for stitching into by both hand and machine.

Inbetweeners - Inspired by Angie (Updated 23/2/14)

Anne Brooke says, "Getting ready for an Angie Lewin 2-day workshop on wood engraving at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Going with Liz, Jane and Natalie from our Guild. We are all as giddy as teenagers. ..well I am as I have admired her work for years. 
Her exhibition is on for a couple more weeks at YSP, I totally recommend it if you can get over there."

Here is some of Anne's preparatory work. 

To be honest, most of my finished pieces don't look that good! Hope you all have a great time and can come back and "cascade" you knowledge down to your fellow members! 

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And here are the photos of our members having the benefit of tuition from the talented Angie Lewin during that two day workshop : 

Inbetweeners - Judy shows us the Ropes

Now here's something you don't see every day - I wonder if there's a way of doing this on a slightly smaller scale? While most of us go to the haberdashers for our supplies, I imagine that Judy is on the phone to the ships' chandlers.

She tells us that this is her latest finished commission, a giant seed-pod made from 16mm rope and linen yarn. 

If you want to hear more about Judy Tadman's amazing work, make sure that you're at our meeting on 4th April when she is going to tell us all about it. 
Visitors are always welcome!

Inbetweeners - Busy Lizzie!

Following my e-mail to our members yesterday, Liz Barraclough responded with some photographs of her latest experiments - lots of different techniques on display here, I imagine she will have a queue at her table at our next meeting! 

The above photo shows the striking effects that can be achieved by combining Angelina Fibres, Angelina Film and textile. 

This is a cyanotype print made using lace as a mask. 

Cyanotype is a photosensitive printing process, first used in 1842 

(thank you Wikipedia!) 

These two photos show what Liz says is her first foray into weaving. 

Pretty impressive and very inspiring! 

Finally, some fabric which has been wrapped around rusted objects 

and buried, then dug up, to be used in future projects. 

I wonder what it's like to plan ahead?!

Thanks to Liz for sharing her work with us. 

Inbetweeners - Two from Sue

Here are two pincushions made by member Sue Tebbutt. Sue works mainly from kits / patterns and her work is very fine and detailed. 

January Meeting - Anna Greenbank

Our wet and windy January meeting featured a talk by Anna Greenbank, a graduate student of Birmingham University who has a degree in Textile Design (Embroidery). She brought lots of samples and examples of her work and workbooks and explained that initially briefs were set for the students by the tutors and were very design led, but that later in the three-year course students could set their own briefs, which suited Anna better as she wanted to make "things" rather than just produce lots of artwork. 
In order to produce designs suitable for machine embroidery, many of Anna's initial sketches employ the technique of continuous line drawings. This is illustrated by the following photographs of her beautiful machine-stitched birds :

The above pictures are actually of the back of Anna's work, the below photo shows the front of her design with another of her bird illustrations, which eventually became a lengthy piece of wallpaper : 

For her next design brief Anna used the theme of seashore / shells and made many trips to the east coast, enlisting the help of her family to find shells and pebbles with holes in that Anna could use to stitch through. 
As you can see from the following photographs, embroidery can take many forms : 

Anna also explained how she had come up with an ingenious way of colouring shells and stones, using nail varnish, a technique she had earlier used to marble her nails! (She made it sound very easy - just drop nail varnish onto the surface of a dish of water, swirl around and dip the shells in - but I remain to be convinced!) 

You can see Anna's effective results in the next photo : 

Having completed her degree, Anna has decided to take further training to become a teacher and is hoping to start teacher training next year at Manchester or Birmingham. 

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One of our members, Sue Lawrence, brought in a panel that she had completed to become part of a larger piece of work produced by Halifax Inner Wheel (the Ladies' Branch of Rotary International) - Sue's work is always a joy to see, and she allowed us to share it with you too! 

It shows the Halifax Piece Hall with the spire of the Square Chapel in the background. 

You will see this photo reproduced on the Halifax Embroiderers' Guild Facebook Page - why not visit and "like" our page, and if not a member of our Branch already, feel free to come along to a meeting as a visitor to see if you like us - details at the top of the page!