Margaret's Regional Day Success!

Despite a high number of entries and the exceptional quality of the competition, our Programme Secretary Margaret Walton won not one, but TWO prizes out of the seven on offer at Regional Day on 8th June.

Margaret won the prestigious Yorkshire and The Humber Region Challenge Cup for her 3D effect picture of dry stone walls on the theme of "Regional Heritage". Margaret will keep the cup for a year until it is handed to the next recipient (hopefully also from the Halifax Branch!) and she also won a cheque for £50. 

Margaret was also thrilled to hear that she had won Third Prize in the Coats Anchor Award for her witty take on the theme of Underground, with her appliquéd carrots and their lovely feather tops. Her prize was a certificate and a smashing box of threads and stuff kindly donated by Coats Anchor. 

The competition was judged anonymously by the morning speaker Rubina (Ruby) Porter from Merseyside, who was telling us about her inspirational work with orphans in Bangladesh - read all about her at www.megonline.co.uk/sree-pur-refuge/

June Meeting - Brooches and Homes

Unfortunately our booked speaker couldn't make it tonight due to illness, but luckily we had a few days notice - just time for Wyn to put together some lovely little packs of fabric and buttons for us to make a brooch each. Amazingly, we nearly all finished them too, despite the excitement of voting for the winners of our Annual Branch Challenge and news about all the exciting exhibitions, shows and fairs coming our way! 

Anyway, these are the results of our labours, which I'm sure you'll agree are right on trend!

Our 2013 Annual Branch Challenge had the theme of "HOME", for which we all bought a canvas of the same size (about 8" square) so that they would make a cohesive display in a future exhibition. 

We voted for the winners by putting 20p in a saucer next to the ones we liked the best. There was no limit on how many times you could vote, and proceeds went into our Branch funds. There were first and second prizes of £30 and £20 - worth making the effort for!

Our runaway winner was.......Anne Brooke with her lovely stitched collage. 

In second place was Jan Webster with her colourful garden-themed canvas.

In joint third place and no particular order, were all the others! 

Davina's crazy patchwork :

Sue Morgan's appliquéd coffee break :

Julie Turner's felted and funny washing line : 

Cynthia Smith's atmospheric collage with tricky edges :

Margaret Walton's imaginative seashore:

Sandra Wallace's (last minute!) pretty patchwork house :

Janice Townend's family-themed collage : 

Jane Clayton's quirky cartoon man and dog :

Sue Bellamy's ribbon-work Yorkshire Rose :

A big thank you to all the members who took part in the challenge, and to those who haven't quite finished theirs yet - don't give up! 

Saltaire Arts Trail - May 2013

Apologies for the lack of recent news - I've had to miss a couple of meetings due to work. 

Here is a photo of Anne Brooke, our Treasurer, with her packed stall at the Saltaire Arts Trail last weekend - I'm sure it was much emptier by Monday afternoon! 
If you didn't manage to get there - it's well worth a visit next time, with three huge rooms full of local artists selling their wares at the Victoria Hall and lots of local open houses too - providing plenty of inspiration (as well as spending opportunities...)

Small but perfectly formed...

Some of us had a fun day working on our own projects or on competition entries for Regional Day at the Maurice Jagger Centre last Sunday. And some of us accomplished more than others, as you can see from the attached photo - it's surprising how long the "design stage" can last...that's my excuse anyway - that and the trip to Marks and Spencer...
Anne worked on some pieces to hang in a gallery in Brighouse
Jane worked on her Cardoon
Janice worked on her Yorkshire Heritage piece
Wyn worked on Eleanor of Aquitane
Mandy worked on her Columbine
Davina worked on mentally packing her case for her trip to New York on the following day! 

March Meeting - Anne Brooke from A-Z and back...

A chilly March evening saw us settle down to a talk from our own member and treasurer Anne Brooke. Anne is head of art at a local high school, mother of two girls, and producer of a prodigious amount of textile art! 
Despite the best efforts of her father, Anne left school and did a foundation course in Art. Being short of funds, Anne tried to use available materials and recycle where possible, and this aim has remained with her - even now she is to be found prowling the aisles of DIY stores "recovering" wallpaper samples and reusing clothing found in charity shops. 
Abandoning her initial aim to become a primary school teacher, Anne began her teaching career at a secondary school in Lincoln. This led to her doing a photography course and also exploring felt-making, which piqued her interest in textile art, an area she had not previously explored in any depth. 

Several years of workshops and experimentation later, Anne came across a City and Guilds stand at a textile show, and started a distance learning course which allowed her to use up many of the UFOs (unfinished objects...) that we all have lying around. She showed us some of the felt vessels which had been her reaction to criticism from her tutor about using muted colours (above).
Learning that the textile course was being wound up, having to complete four modules in three months led to Anne concentrating on the kind of work she liked. This piece, using limpets as a theme, saw her return to the use of puff paint - a favoured medium. You can see from this picture that Anne's work is multi-layered and uses many techniques, along with hand and machine embroidery. 

Since completing her City and Guilds, Anne concentrated on seed pods as the main theme for her work - as subject which has always fascinated her. 

Working in mixed media, she has entered her work into many exhibitions which has led to her being invited to exhibit in galleries throughout the country. She has also had stalls at such shows as Art in the Pen in Skipton, where she described her excitement at finally selling her first "big piece"!

Below, you can see an example of one of Anne's workbooks - she says that keeping written and illustrated notes on a daily basis helps to develop her ideas. 

Frankly, I do not think there was a member present who was not left feeling shell-shocked (and in my case, inadequate!) by exactly how much Anne manages to cram into her life. Sleep must be a stranger to her! 

She also has a shop on Folksy, a blog (see link on the side bar of this post), and a website, using her working name, "H-anne Made". She continues to work full-time and is currently preparing for further exhibitions, shows and workshops. 

Bearly Snowing in British Columbia

Member Sue Tebbutt, who is currently working away in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, has sent us some photographs to remind us what REAL snow is like!

Sue is going to pay a visit to the Kelowna Branch of the Embroiderers' Association of Canada this week to make up for missing our Guild meetings. It will be interesting to find out what we have in common (or otherwise) with our Canadian counterparts. 

And for those of you wondering just where Kelowna is, I hope this will help!

Claire Tinsley Workshop

On the Saturday following Claire's Talk (see below), Branch members were lucky enough to be able to attend a follow-up workshop run by Claire at our meeting place, the Maurice Jagger Centre in Halifax. 

Here are some photos of the work in progress during the day : 

 Above, Cath chats to Claire as Jan and Myra are doing some machine embroidery, and right, Sue is highlighting some of the detail on her design using a marker pen, prior to further embellishing it with stitch. 

Above, Jane is working on her Thistles while Sandra (left) ponders her next move. Also shown are Janice's Daisy and the photo she is using for inspiration.









Here are the pieces at the end of the day:

Cath

Anne

Jane

Janice

Liz

Myra

Margaret

Sandra

Sue

What talented members we have! 

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