"Ryedale Challenge" Young Persons' Workshop

On 5th February we held a workshop for Young Embroiderers who wanted to take part in the "Ryedale Challenge". Members from Ryedale had provided each of the 17 branches in the region with a bag of assorted fabrics, threads, buttons and beads, with the proviso that they be used by young people, with the results being entered into a competition to be judged at Regional Day 2011.

We decided that we would produce an art quilt which would later be presented to the new Forget-me-Not Childrens' Hospice being built in Kirklees, so with that in mind, we decided to make the theme floral.

On the day we had seven willing volunteers, who worked really hard to produce lots of colourful flowers and at the end of the day they left with more flowers to decorate to fill in the background that Cath Moore had worked hard on during the previous week, dyeing fabrics to make fields and sky.

Working together stitching their decorated flowers onto the background

Piecing the strip quilt and embellishing the "corn field"

Branch Photo 4th February 2011

As we had such a good turn out for our February meeting, we thought we'd take advantage of it an have our photo taken, although finding a plain background at the Maurice Jagger Centre is impossible!

At the meeting we brought our "heritage items" - pieces of embroidery that had been passed down to us from our ancestors - ranging from embroidered coats to christening robes.

Our embellished pieces - ready for some stitching and beads!

The lovely flower stencil that we all want!

A heart stencilled quite thickly over the background

A close up of the lovely flower stencil

Hearts stencilled in acrylic medium

Wine bottle labels and butterflies

The lovely flower stencil...

Stencilled acrylic paint

Gold acrylic paint, embossing powders and glitter

Well, that's one corner done...

The lovely flower stencil again

Metal and paper flowers, Expanadaprint...and some sewing!

Hearts and flowers, with added Expandaprint

And then....

Over lunch, we watched part two of the instruction provided by our "hostess" Beryl, and her assistant 'Pokey' (American, what can I say?) which gave us inspiration for embellishing our background fabrics with stencils, stamps, embossing powders, metals, acrylic medium and glitter (OK, that was just me.) Wyn gave generously of her expertise and materials and we all learned lots of new techniques, going home with lots of ideas and coveting the lovely flower stencil...

Some of our Beryl Taylor "background fabrics"

Torn paper and book pages glued onto calico (or similar)

Torn up cherry blossom serviette, overlaid with tissue and painted

A vibrant flowery piece

Torn images laid on a backing of calico

Tissue overpainted with diluted fabric paint or acrylic

A serviette overlaid with tissue and painted

Beryl Taylor Workshop

A lovely day today at the MJC, we hired the room for our own workshop. We watched a Beryl Taylor DVD kindly supplied by Wyn and then followed Beryl's examples and produced some Taylor-esque work of our own, with varying degrees of success. First of all we painted our background fabric with diluted PVA glue, then we laid various paper products on top, including serviettes, torn wrapping paper, book pages, magazine pages and sweet wrappers. These were also brushed with watered down PVA, then torn strips of tissue paper were laid on top, again sealed with PVA and finally painted with diluted fabric paint. These were left to dry, or helped on their way with a combination of heat guns, hairdryers and sunbeams! They were quite wet, as you can imagine, and we found that some of them separated from the backing when they dried out, probably due to the PVA solution being too weak. They had to be reattached with Bondaweb, but that worked well.

Another new beginning!

I thought I'd just see how easy it was to create a blog - and it was easy!

Friday's meeting was typically quiet, it being the holiday season, but we had fun (plenty of which was provided by Wyn regaling us with tales of her holiday), and tried our hands at lacemaking, thanks to Gill - once she had been home for the pins!

We also looked at some lovely lace samples that members had brought in - some HUUGE samples like Polly's tablecloth and some tiny ones which were very old, dating back to the 17th Century. It was fascinating and daunting to see the tiny stitches which had been made without the aid of artificial light and machine-made needles.

Dawn brought some goodies for us to browse, from Variegations, along with the news that she is "merging" with Texere and will soon be closing the shop in Sowerby Bridge. She is going along to Texere as their creative consultant and will soon be offering a series of workshops. Dawn is herself going on a course run by Stewart Gill paints and will be one of only a few people in the UK accredited by SG to teach using their lovely products. Good luck to Dawn in her new venture!

Mandy