Our June Meeting

Our June Meeting

We had another busy day in Haxby this month.  It was the final month for stitch clubs and Marina's group were making progress on their samples of crazy patchwork embroidery.  Crazy quilts had their heyday in the late 1800s when 'fancywork' was a home decorating trend!  Traditionally a variety of fabric scraps (including silks) were used with decorative embroidery stitching along each seam line.  Small motifs were often stitched into larger areas of fabric and were a way of demonstrating skill.   The resulting quilts were whimsical and perhaps rather dated to the modern eye.  However, like many old fashioned techniques they can be revisited and used in different ways.  Marina brought in a large pumpkin made using crazy patchwork techniques that was both charming and decorative.

Marina's pumpkin

Crazy patchwork stitching worked with black, white and greys

Barbara's group tried their hands at another form of applique.  In the reverse applique technique layers of fabric are stitched together and cut away at different layers to reveal different colours.  It requires tightly woven (cotton) fabric and small even stitches to keep the turned under cut sides in place.  Barbara had given out packs with fabrics so that people could give it a go and they all enjoyed making their stars.  These required four fabric squares, pale blue for the frame, dark blue, orange and yellow for the central star.  Members practiced stitching needleturn circles, straight lines and angles/points.  

Lisa and Janet's work in progress

This month the beautiful work that Jill was doing caught my eye. She was working a table runner on a frame which she undid so we could see and admire the whole piece.  White linen fabric was being stitched with white threads to create a delicately textured surface.  It was a combination of counted thread work and pulled thread work and she admitted it required both concentration and accuracy to get the pattern to work properly.  

              Jill's whitework table runner

The travelling book returned from Angela this month with some interesting information about Wessex stitchery which was designed by Margaret Foster in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.  It is a counted thread technique using a variety of stitches.  Margaret Foster's favourite was chain stitch and its many variations which she referred to as 'Margaret work'.  Angela produced some lovely worked samples to put alongside the historical research into Margaret's techniques and designs.  

Angela'a pages on Wessex work

 

This month there was a competition.  The requirements were for a stitched piece based on a painting or the work of an artist, using unconventional materials.  Participants were asked to bring a small card with the name of the artist or work on it.  The resulting pieces were, not unsurprisingly, very varied and we enjoyed looking at them.  In the end Barbara took home the Viking Loom voucher and the Shirley Smith Bowl for her three dimensional piece inspired by Geoffrey Key's  "Gate Posts".  She had seen the painting in a Tennants Art Catalogue and was intrigued because she collects stones with holes in.  She already had the coloured fabrics  that would blend for the landscape and enjoyed the challenge set to use unusual materials.  

Barbara's winning competition entry

Second place went to Jane's tryptich inspired by Boticelli.  It showcased a variety of stitches,  including goldwork, serene colours and clever construction. 

Jane's tryptich

Third place went to Diane's interpretation of Monet's lily pond.  This certainly met the 'unusual materials' aspect of the brief and was a very creative piece.

Diane's lily pond

All the entries were very interesting and we appreciated the effort that had gone into their design and construction. 

Toni Buckby , Re-embroidering Blackwork

The artist Toni Buckby gave us a fascinating talk in the afternoon on how she uses her fine art practice to investigate, reconstruct, interpret and present fragile and inaccessible Blackwork embroideries from the Victoria and Albert Museum collections.  She mainly spoke about the research she had done as part of her PhD studies.   These have proved particularly challenging as Covid restrictions made travel and in person work difficult at the start of her research.  Drawing on her IT skills Toni has developed an innovative technique involving scanning Blackwork textile items and layering hand drawn images of where the silk embroidery had been before it decayed and disappeared.  She studied textiles in detail and identified the range of stitches and techniques used in Blackwork in the Tudor-Elizabethan-Jacobean eras.  

Toni showed us her meticulous samples which she had hand stitched onto different weights of linen (with different weights of silk threads) to establish how much time the makers might have put into creating the coifs, waistcoats and other decorative textiles that have survived.  The thread counts were up to 74 threads per inch on plain weave linen and she (half) joked that it had ruined her eyesight.  Apparently the historic linens could reach an incredibly fine 140 count.  We were in awe of Toni's skill and dedication to understanding the technical and practical elements involved.

Because Toni feels very strongly that the skill and labour of the 'unknown' makers should be honoured she has facilitated community projects that celebrate Blackwork.  One of these was the "Unstitched Coif" which was part of a group artwork in which Toni sent out a call for stitchers to interpret a historial coif cloth in their own way.  She initially expected around forty participants but her social media post ended up reaching hundreds of individuals and groups and eventually she received 77 coifs which have recently been received into the V&A collection and can be seen on collections.vam.ac.uk (search with 'unstitched coif' to find them).  YES members were particulary taken with how varied and skillful the finished pieces were.  Toni indicated that once her thesis has been submitted she has some ideas for another community project and we fully expect some YES members to want to be involved!

Toni's coif - silk threads on linen fabric

tonibuckby.com

blackworkembroidery.com

Instagram: @tonibuckby

Our next meeting will be on Satuday 4th July.  Meetings are held in Haxby Memorial Hall, near York, 10.30-3.30.  There will be member-led stitch clubs and informal stitching in the morning, with a 'Show and Tell' in the afternoon.  Visitors are always welcome so if you are intererested to see what we're about, please come along.