February Meeting - Speaker, Claire Tinsley

Our February speaker was Claire Tinsley, who is an award winning quilter, and proprietor of the shop "Hannah's Room" which she set up when she found it difficult to obtain the kind of fabrics she wanted to use in her own work. She started the business at home from her daughter's bedroom, hence the name...

Claire talked us through her career in textile art (I hesitate to use the word quilting, as so much of her work is art and embroidery based, although technically qualifying as quilting for the purposes of competition and exhibition).
Her first work was a pram "quilt" which was really a patchwork cover that had no wadding - at that time Claire didn't realise that was an essential component (or warmth factor!). Her work quickly progressed and almost from the beginning involved elements of hand printing or painting. 

This small leaf quilt, based on Fall in New England, is hand-painted with Dynaflow and the leaf edges are reinforced with wire so that they keep their shape. 

Claire's work has been exhibited many times at the Malvern and Harrogate Quilt Shows before entering the larger arena of the International Festival of Quilts, and has featured on numerous occasions in different textile art publications, including "Fabrications". Along the way she completed her City and Guilds in both Patchwork and Embroidery. Claire says that she rarely takes more than three weeks to complete a quilt, as she always knows exactly what she wants to achieve, before starting the piece. 











This stunning quilt in maroon and lime (detail  left, and below), "Beneath the Trees", won a second prize at Harrogate in a year when Claire also won a first prize for her piece depicting the Garden of Eden "Through the Garden Gate".

In 2004 she was asked to create a piece for the Hoffman stand at the Festival of Quilts and produced this stunning chenille quilt (detail shown right)  using seven layers of fabric. Cut on the bias and then washed and dried in a machine to give the characteristic ruffled edge, it was then featured in a French patchwork magazine and went on to win a prize at the Malvern Show.


She developed this technique further, creating a cushion with a velvet centre panel featuring cut-back work (left),  which won a first prize at Harrogate. 

In fact, there does not seem to have been a year when Claire has not collected accolades for her skilled work, and in 2005 she won the National Competition with her beautiful and well-known floral quilt, "These are a Few of my Favourite Flowers". 

Claire says that she has now taught workshops on this quilt "from John O'Groats to Lands End" and you can see the results of her workshop at our own Branch in the entry above. 

If you would like to see more of Claire's work and find out further details about workshops and courses, you can visit her website at http://www.clairetinsley.co.uk

January Play Day - "Angie Lewin"

Taking inspiration from the lovely work of Angie Lewin, members spent the day working on backgrounds for stitch based on natural forms - seed heads, grasses and foliage. 

Here is some of their work, ready to be taken home and developed!

Davina Adams

Margaret Walton

Liz Barraclough

Janice Townend

Jane Clayton

Wyn Ingham

Cath Moore

January 2013 - Stitched up!

Happy New Year everyone. 

In the January meeting we went back-to-basics and tried out some stitches that we seldom use. Much fun was had getting to grips with Pekinese stitch, wheat ear stitch, raised chain band and bullion stitch amongst about 12 others. We did find a successful way to cheat with bullion that gave us an identical result without the stress (and pricked fingers). Why is it with bullion stitch that you don't feel that you have enough hands? We found if you lay a double thread foundation stitch and then "whip" around it, that it looks identical to bullion stitch. Apologies to the purists amongst you, but, we found a less-stressful way to produce equally delicious results!

Pekinese Stitch

Wheat Ear Stitch

Raised Chain Band

Bullion Stitch 

Ten Years Sewn Up!

Here are some photos from our Textile Art Exhibition
Saturday 24th November 2012
Maurice Jagger Centre, Halifax 

The variety of work on display was amazing!

November Meeting - Alice Fox

Another well-attended meeting this month, and MORE new members - welcome to you all! We're happy to have you with us. Almost as good, two lots of cake from Margaret W and Anne B, which tasted good AND helped us to raise funds. 

Our speaker last night was Alice Fox who told us about her artistic journey. Alice works with a mixture of print and stitch on paper, linen and silk, and what you could loosely term natural dyeing - using the rust and decay from objects found in the landscape, to colour and shape fabric which she then uses to create works of art. 

One of Alice's smaller pieces of work, stitch on paper

On leaving Bradford College in 2011, Alice began what is in textile art terms a meteoric rise to fame, being the joint winner of the Graduate Showcase at the Festival of Quilts and then going on to be the artist in residence at Spurn Point in 2012 which was the focus of her talk. 

She explained to us how she started to get a feel for the landscape and just spent lots of time walking on the beach collecting found objects which she incorporated into small "weavings", each one telling a story of what had been lost and found and illustrating that day's walk.

She showed us some work which had been made from larger pieces of fabric which had been tied around rusty fixings attached to wave breaks and other large fixtures along the coastline surrounding the Spurn Point lighthouse. She continued to experiment with this technique, becoming braver and leaving fabric tied up outside for several days or weeks so that it took on the textures of the metal, sand and even plant-life found on the shore. 

Stitch was then used to embellish the "dyed" fabric.

Alice's residency culminated in an exhibition displayed in the lighthouse, with one piece hanging down the centre of the building measuring a massive 4.7m (that's 15 and a half feet!) What's more, the whole length was hand stitched, to a greater or lesser degree - no wonder Alice was asking herself what she had taken on!

Above, you can see a detail of the long piece, which also includes collographic printing using plant forms found on the shoreline. 

(Definition of Collograph - It is a simple form of printing using found materials that are arranged in a collage form - the objects are usually stuck down and then sealed and inked and used to make prints). 

Big thanks to Alice for such an informative talk, and good luck in her forthcoming projects. Why not check out her website and blog for more details of what she's up to. 

October 2012 Meeting - "Inchies"

According to the trusty online dictionary, 
"Inchies are one inch by one inch squares of paper (or fiber) that contain small art, collaged or hand-drawn." (I'm guessing that Dictionary is American)

Well, the title is a bit of a misnomer, because ours were actually "5cm-ies" but that doesn't have the same ring, somehow! 
Our Chairman Wyn provided a selection of tiny packets of loveliness and we all chose one we liked the look of to produce our own miniature work of art. 

Of course, our time was limited and with that in mind, the room fell silent(ish)  as we all concentrated on finishing our Inchies.

By a quarter to nine, we had all managed to produce at least one Inchy and some members had produced two! Some were not quite finished...

As you can see, there were some very imaginative pieces created, some manipulated, some wired, some cut into pieces, some with lovely embroidery - we all had fun!

Of course, envious comparison was inevitable!