Our July Meeting

Another busy and enjoyable meeting on 1st July. Stitching during the morning with Jose and Chris B’s stitch clubs and the fantastic Nikki Parmenter was our speaker in the afternoon. Nikki’s textile based mixed media work is astonishing. Her designs, complex and with meaning and symbolism, are turned with great skill into fabulous textured works of art using a sewing machine and a variety of unorthodox and often recycled materials.  The results are stunning.  Vibrant, intriguing,  it’s difficult to do them justice in photographs. She brought lots of examples and was  generous with her time and response to members’ questions. 

Jose and Chris have one more stitch club session next month. Beginning in September Sharon and Maggie will lead three sessions. At the meeting members signed up for Sharon’s embroidered colour wheel and Maggie’s block printing on which to embroider. They also signed up for our visit in October to the Bankfield Museum and Shibden Hall. 

At the August meeting two of our members Nicky and Liz (with input from Mary) will be our speakers, talking about their Foundation Degree inTextile Practice, which they are doing at Bradford School of Art. The talk is called ‘Becoming a Textile Student after Retirement’. They will bring along sketchbooks and some of their work for us to see. 

Chris

Here are some pictures of the lovely and varied items members were working on on Saturday morning, with some of Nikki Parmenter's work below. 

Nikki Parmenter's Work

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 

Our May Meeting

 Our meeting on 29th  April, which should have been the May meeting but there was the little matter of  a coronation,  was another enjoyable and busy day for us. New stitch clubs started with Jose’s stitching small pieces and and Chris B’s embroidered dolls. We’ll watch with interest the progress of the work done on these, and post photos each month. 

Our speaker, Tanya Bentham more than lived up to expectations. An expert on mediaeval embroidery her talk was informative and funny and obviously much enjoyed, but her own work was astonishing. Members were very impressed with everything about it. The skill involved, the integrity of the materials used and  the artistry of the design.  And the naughty bits! Well, as she said, mediaeval embroidery was beautiful  but could be bawdy too. 

With reference to the coronation, there was of course wonderful embroidery to be seen, in particular the screen made by the RSN which was stunning, as was the embroidery on the Queen’s dress. And the embroidery on Penny Mordaunt’s dress and cloak was very striking. As was she! 

Our April Meeting

 The speaker at our April meeting was Dr M Faye Prior, textile curator at York Castle Museum. She talked about the acquisition, conservation and display of museum textiles, with the emphasis on 17 century raised work, more popularly known as stumpwork. We saw images of beautiful caskets and mirror frames and Faye gave us a deeper understanding of the design process, stitch techniques used, and the stories these pieces told. 

We also had the competition for a piece done from a kit, book or magazine, with Jacqs’ 
delightful doll the winner. She is a lady of a certain age and looks a touch eccentric. I mean the doll of course!  The entries were varied in style and technique but all equally cleverly stitched. We always enjoy seeing each other’s work so many thanks to those who entered. The draw for the bursary of up to £100 for a course or workshop was won by Denise who is to take an RSN workshop on, coincidentally, raised work. Thanks to all those who entered. There’s always next year! 

Two new stitch clubs begin at the next meeting, Jose’s stitching small  and Chris Beaver’s embroidered dolls, and the speaker will be Tanya Bentham. Tanya is sure to be highly entertaining as well as informative on mediaeval embroidery. There’ll be more examples of the 52 stitches challenge for us to see and be inspired by. 

YES is thriving, with new members joining each month which is very pleasing.

Our March Meeting

 What a super meeting on 4th March. Excellent attendance, and a busy productive day. The  morning stitch club with Liz on book binding and Jane on hardanger continued with lovely results, followed after lunch by a very interesting talk and workshop from textile artist Liz Almond. Liz is a long experienced authority on Tudor blackwork but in this instance her topic was traditional Japanese embroidery. She told members about the origin and development of sashiko, boro and kogin embroidery and had prepared kits for members to produce several different pieces of Japanese embroidery. We all started with the kogin piece. The display of her own work was  most inspiring. So skilled and aesthetically pleasing. There was much concentration when work started on the kits, but not so much that we couldn’t also enjoy a chat while we worked! 

The sales table continues to provide all sorts of useful material for members and a welcome contribution to YES funds. We really appreciate those who run the stall and those who bring and buy. 

Our speaker on 1st April will be Dr M Faye Prior, textile curator at the York Castle Museum, adding to the wide variety of 2023 speakers. We will also have the competition for a piece produced from a commercial design such as a kit or from a magazine etc. Members will vote for their favourite and the winner will receive a £20 voucher for The Viking Loom. So another meeting to which we look forward. 

Our February Meeting

Another enjoyable meeting on Saturday. The book binding and hardanger stitch clubs continued. Thanks to Liz F who tutored this session on Annie’s behalf. We had the last postcard swap on the theme of wings. What a fabulous variety of cards we’ve had. Those taking part will have some beautiful cards to treasure. Thanks to Chris B for all her work on this. She’ll have another group project for us later in the year. It will undoubtedly be fun to do and very well organised. 

After lunch six members gave a Show and Tell presentation. Six very different types of work but all skilfully stitched and lovely to look at. Thank you Viv, Barbara, Heather, Liz F, Maggie and Pauline S. Thanks also to Moira who brought a selection of the wonderful work by the late Niki Brown to show us, and who paid tribute to a very skilled, creative and loved long-term York Embroiderers’ Guild member. 

This Saturday's Meeting

 Our February meeting on Saturday and we’re looking forward to stitch club in the morning and a show and tell from six of our members after lunch.  We’ll also have a display of some of the wonderful work of the late Niki Brown. Moira has put together a small  collection representing Niki’s stitching life and will say a few words about this remarkable lady.  See below.  And of course there’ll be more super postcards for the monthly swap. 

Postcard Photos