Our June Meeting

The June meeting held on the 10th was a busy stitching day with our two stitch club groups working during the morning session. Chris B’s group continued with their fabulous embroidered dolls and Jose’s group worked on their  charming miniature pieces. Very different work but equally delightful and skilled. After lunch members were invited to try their hand at  some decorative darning. I am very grateful to Annie who stepped in for me and led the session. There were books about and examples of this type of embroidery, and information on its origins along with lots of appropriate, colourful wool available. 

At our next meeting on 1st July we’ll continue with Jose and Chris’s stitch clubs, and the speaker after lunch will be Nikki Parmenter. She will give a demonstration of her techniques and there’ll be project packs on offer. Nikki is an experienced, widely exhibited artist whose work is textile based mixed media. Complex in its production it is colourful and richly worked. This will no doubt be very interesting and something to which we can really look forward. 

Chris

YHEG Summer Gathering

A very enjoyable meeting of the Yorkshire and Humberside Embroidery Group at the Regen Centre, Riccall, on Saturday. Two excellent speakers and lots of members from the various groups in our region. The committee which once represented all the EG branches in our region has been working hard to establish this new independent group and another successful meeting was the result. 

Many, if not most, of you will know Janet Browne and her highly original, charming and skilled machine stitched appliquéd pieces. Her maps as she calls them. These capture her walks around her village, car journeys from Yorkshire to Cornwall, a variety of places in Yorkshire or sometimes simply her garden. Stopping to draw and photograph what interests, intrigues or amuses her, she then creates a stitched journey, always based on reality and what she saw. Her work is lovely to look at and very technically accomplished. Though the subject matter may be unsophisticated its creation is anything but. A popular speaker, she is a well liked and respected member of  the stitching community in the north. You can catch Janet on the Making Stitches podcast, episode twenty. 

The afternoon speaker provided something definitely different. David Morrish, aka KingFly, entertained us with a super talk about his very varied career in textiles  beginning with art school, going into tailoring with a twist, teaching fashion and pattern cutting at Sheffield Hallam University, acting as a consultant for high end designers including Vivienne Westwood, discovering machine and hand embroidery, gaining an Embroiderers’ Guild scholarship and winning the Hand and Lock prize twice! Oh, and he was also Wilcome digital embroiderer of the year. Twice.  There is so much to David and his work I can only recommend that you learn more about him online. He was great fun and took time to answer the many questions from members who were obviously very interested in his life and work. David features on the BBC TV programme Make it to Market. 

Add to the above, embroidery supplies to buy and friends to meet up with at coffee and lunch, it was a good day.

Chris