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!