August Playday - A Caravan of Love

For the August Playday, Wyn had cleverly devised a way of constructing a caravan which was relatively quick, and didn't involve complicated sewing to get the caravan to hold together. 

Here are some of our members' designs, prior to completion...

Catherine's grey and pink Caravan with toning bunting

Davina's colourful caravan with printed windows and retro door

Jess's tiny caravan with wood-effect panelling

Margaret's blue and green caravan with spotty wheels

A group shot which gives away some of the secrets - 

and indicates that there may be more caravans to come! 

August Meeting - a bit of everything!

Our August meeting was a bit of a free-for-all! We had planned to embellish flip-flops however Anne, whose brilliant idea it was, couldn't make the meeting as she was on holiday, so those members who wanted to, still fiddled with their flip-flops, and others got on with their competition entries or zentangle stitch samplers. 
Here are samples of what members got up to at the meeting, and during the past month! 

Liz made her flip-flops beautiful

Margaret and Davina made some new, tiny flip-flops

Margaret finished a cushion

Vanessa finished a cushion too - and her Zentangle sampler!

Can you guess what colour theme the raffle was?!

On National Celebration of Stitch Day, 

some members sat and stitched at Bankfield Museum, 

where the Exquisite Threads Exhibition is currently in full swing

Michelle Carragher - A Game of Thrones

A few weeks ago, our Chairman Wyn and I were lucky enough to travel to the South East (West) Regional Day at St Albans. The guest speakers were Michelle Carragher, who is one of the principal embroiderers for the Sky series Game of Thrones, and Diana Springall, who is a past chair of the Embroiderers' Guild, renowned textile artist, and collector of textile art. 
The main purpose of our expedition was to see the work of Michelle Carragher, and she was so generous in her display of textile samples for handling and photographing that I thought that I would do the right thing and share them with you. (Unfortunately I didn't manage to steal any.) 
Michelle is self-taught so some of her methods are unconventional.

Some of the embroidery from the costume of the Queen of Dragons, the manipulation of the fabric is meant to resemble the scales of the dragons

Many of Michelle's pieces include detached work

The Direwolf sigil (symbol) of the house of Stark

Michelle Carragher in conversation with Diana Springall

Another detached piece, heavily worked on a background of net 

and then cut out. 

Fantasy insects

Embroidery for a costume for the House of Dorn

Covered buttons, worked on larger pieces of fabric