17th November 2019 - "Inspirations" and African Wall-hanging

After a brief business meeting, Janice Cottier delivered her talk "Inspirations".

This took us back to her growing up in Scotland with relatives who were keen embroiderers, involved with WI and Embroiderers' Guild. Wonderfully, it seemed nothing had been thrown away but stored in the attic, so there were samplers, magazines, newspaper cuttings and pictures, which we passed around and wondered at.
Janice eventually left Scotland for Lesotho, working in a school and inspiring the young pupils in creativity and, in turn, being inspired by the colours, landscape and animals of that country.
It was there that she met her husband, who came from Andreas, and they eventually came back to live on the Isle of Man. The African influence is very strong in the variety of work that she produces and she brought along some of the pieces from the recent exhibition at the Hodgson Loom Gallery.

Because it was our winter schedule and business, talk and workshop all took place on the one day, time to work on the African inspired wall-hanging was more limited than usual. However, participants made good beginnings, as can be seen in the photos and, hopefully, we may see some finished items in the future.

UFOs have landed!

This month's social stitching at Sunset Lakes, just outside Peel, was well attended and three ladies brought along pieces from past workshops.

This stained-glass applique piece from the Lis Binn's workshop in April this year, has been completed by Rosemarie S.

Janet W produced the kits for the Charity Day in July and made this sample.

Maria P had her own take on what to do with the kit and produced these fun sheep.

There won't be a Social Stitching event in December but the next one, in January, will be held at Costa in the Mooragh Park in Ramsey on Thursday 9th. Let's get a few more UFOs to land!

Various from September and October.

Apologies to those of you who actually read this blog, that it hasn't been kept up to date lately.

Back in September the evening AGM was poorly attended but Stella's workshop the next day  proved quite popular. There haven't been any photographs provided, so this must remain un-illustrated.

Social Stitching on 2nd October was held at Riley's Eden conservatory.

October's Evening meeting and Saturday workshop were in the capable hands of Sheena Quayle and titled respectively "Experimental Printing" and "Printing on fabric and paper".

The above photo shows a piece of lace, which has been coated in acrylic paint and used to print a pattern onto sugar paper.

The prints on the above example were created using a gelli mould, made by Sheena, from gelatine and glycerine. Acrylic was rolled onto the surface, then an Indian wood block created the pattern in the acrylic. In the darker example, the gelli mould was covered in a sheet of paper and gently rubbed to transfer the design onto the paper. The process was repeated, with fabric used instead of paper, at the end. It can be seen that there is a considerable difference in tone depending on the medium used.

The collograph above was made from shaped pieces of card, cut from packaging. It was then painted, first in monochrome and then multi colours. See below.

Thank you to Maureen Kennaugh who provided the photos of her own work, so that this blog could be written.

Open Air Stitch-in at Castletown 25th August

 

Our first open-air social stitching event was unfortunate in being held in the only area in the island, on that day, with a sea fret, which cooled the temperature and was accompanied by a cold breeze blowing up Malew Street!  Members were arriving with tales of sunshine elsewhere and were surprised at the cool temperature in Castletown.  However, this did not deter our members from getting into the spirit, stitching and chatting to curious visitors in the square, who came to see what we were doing.  There were a selection of our 4” squares on display and some members had brought a selection of workshop projects to show what the Guild does.  We had a mother and two children from France who were particularly interested – even some chirpy bikers from Southend were curious and we had a couple of local  ladies who spent quite some time talking to members and committee, so although we didn’t get a great deal of interest shown, those who did come to see what we were up to, did spend a good amount of time with us.  A dozen members turned up to stitch, as many as we have at any of our workshops.