Annual Trip!! & York EG Exhibition

It is our annual trip on Wednesday, to Burghley House, near Stamford.  Really looking forward to it.

Yesterday, Friday, a friend and I went along to York EG's exhibition.  There was some wonderful work on show, really liked Josie Storey's work, my friend loved Carol Coleman's rock pictures.  We bumped into a few of the Airedale Crowd there.  They were enjoying it too.  A little birdie told me that there is a hope that Josie Storey is going to do a workshop for us.  A treat in store there!

We went along to the Quilt Museum afterwards, really worth a visit if you are in York.  The visits to the exhibition and the museum took much longer than we expected so there was little time to visit some the craft shops that York has to offer.  Managed to visit Craft Basics in Gillygate, loads of stuff you never knew you needed!!

http://branches.embroiderersguild.com/branches/cityofyork/page11/

http://yorkembroidery.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.quiltmuseum.org.uk/

Have a look at the websites.

Andrea

Calico Gardens Workshop

Our Calico Gardens

 Denise Hibbert, a member of Airedale Branch, gave us a workshop on Calico Gardens.  There were 12 members of the branch at the workshop and some wonderful work was produced.  Calico Gardens are worked on calico using natural coloured threads and trims. One or two did go away from the "natural" route, but the work was very wonderful. It really opened our eyes to what various trims could turn into and how you can use threads.  So much was learnt by the attendees. Hopefully I will be able to upload some photos from the workshop.   Denise is a very skilled needlewoman and under her tuition even I produced work that I will be happy to show, of course it isn't finished yet... but it will be shortly.  Over the past couple of weeks attendees at the workshop have been bring their completed work into Branch meetings, all so different and so skilled.  Well, I did upload the photos, but they are all over the place!

First ones are "the girls" at work, followed by examples that Denise brought along to inspire us.

Our thanks go to Denise for a interesting and inspiring workshop!  Andrea

Talk, 16 May 2012. Traditional Japanese Embroidery, history and Techniques given by Jane Smith

Jane Smith travelled from Lancashire to give us an interesting and informative talk on Japanese Embroidery. She told us about the history, showing us photos of embroideries which dated from 700AD forward to the modern day, continuing to describe the levels of expertise that students are expected to obtain to move forward with their studies. Jane had brought examples of her and her colleagues wonderful work. It was a delight to see the embroideries which were intricate and executed with such skill. She also told us about the costs of some of the fabrics, which contained pure gold. She had timed her work, some pieces had taken 300 hours.

Jane has a website : http://www.nejiribana.co.uk/p/home.html where she gives more detail and has a gallery of her work. Defiantly worth visit!

Airedale Embroiderer's Guild would like to thank Jane for the talk.

2nd Post

I am new to the blogging world and I have been learning as I went along setting the page up.  We will be putting more information on the blog in the next few days so keep calling back as the pages fill.


Airedale branch is large branch, some members are very skilled embroiderers and then there is me, recently retired with a love of many crafts, but very little skill in embroidery.  I look back over the 18 months of my membership and notice that the improvement (in my eyes) has come on in leaps and bounds.  All due to the encouragement, help and teaching I have been given by members of the branch. Don't think that you have to be a good embroiderer to join the branch, all levels are welcomed and feel comfortable with their skills ( or in my case, lack of).


I attended a workshop just after I joined, Silk painting and goldwork.  I went along to the workshop not knowing anyone, I was welcomed and made friends quickly.  I was interested in the silk painting but felt that goldwork would be too advanced for me.  We had such good teaching that I was happy with doing the goldwork and was really impressed and proud of the result.  I went on to do Goldwork at the Yorkshire and Humber Summer Residential School in 2011 and I have almost finished the project (I have done a number of projects between) but it is so effective.

So, the gist of what I am telling you is don't feel you need to be an expert to join the branch, come along and enjoy yourself.  If you enjoy textile crafts, or just crafts, you will find like minded people. A number of us go down the "mixed media" line which is so interesting and fun.

Andrea

First Blog

Hi and Welcome to the Airedale Branch of the Embroiderers' Guild.  For details of our meetings please see our page which is on the Embroiderers' Guild website.  We will be using this page to keep people up dated with our events and workshops