Return of the Secret Stash

 Those of us not on holiday somewhere (hopefully) nice and sunny had a lovely meeting today AND it was the return of the Secret Stash - back by popular demand. Same format as last time - a bundle of fabric and a button, two hours to create something with it - anything at all, any technique. Oooh the pressure! Anyway, as usual there was a wide variety of ideas, some of us weren't brilliant at time management (Saima!) but we had fun anyway and it was nice to see what everyone came up with. Pictures below.

We also unveiled the finished Skipton Castle project. No pictures to share just yet - we will be doing a reveal shortly before Yarndale and the finished piece will be on display there so come and see us! We'll have a bargain sales table and a mini workshop running too. Claire K will be giving a talk on Sunday about our community outreach work, and I have volunteered to be her "glamorous" assistant - though I'm not quite sure what I'll be assisting with or that I will be glamorous! 

We have gained new members from some of our Yarndale visitors so do come and find us and listen to Claire's talk.

A busy September

Well, we had a productive meeting today and a short AGM. It was the end of an era as Claire (Chair), Sally (Secretary) and Jane (Treasurer) stepped down after many years. Fortunately Dee has taken on the role of Secretary and Margaret has volunteered to be Treasurer; Jill has taken over Membership. Sally and Claire are in the new role of IT and Social media, which they did before but we decided to make it a bit more official! That leaves the role of Chair. It was decided that we would have a rotating Chair from the Committee members as no-one was keen to volunteer; we feel that this will give an opportunity for more people to become involved by delegating tasks and organising events etc to small groups of people, so fingers crossed. We would like to welcome Christine B to the committee.

As our AGM's are short meetings, so the rest of the day was spent stitching and chatting and discussing various ideas for new projects which will be added to the Group Challenges tab in due course. 

We were at Yarndale again at the weekend; it was lovely to chat to people and we had a map of the world for people to stitch patches of fabric on to. Of course we had to go for a little wander too and couldn't resist buying some goodies. 

As usual there was a wide variety of stitching going o a the meeting:

Secret Stash

 This month's meeting was a Secret Stash challenge. Everyone was given an envelope containing the same fabric scraps, some lace and buttons; the challenge, in the spirit of the Sewing Bee was to create something using the pieces in an hour and a half, any techniques or ideas allowed. We did cheat a bit and have an extra half an hour, but it was great fun and the results were all different. We might have another go with different scraps at a later date. Here are some of our efforts in various states of completeness. Hopefully they will be on display at our next exhibition. 

The starting pack:

                                        

November Meeting and Textilia III

It was great to see everyone yesterday and we welcomed some new members too!

Several of our members belong to Textilia III and we were joined today by Catherine Slater another Textilia member. Textilia III is a Yorkshire based textile group formed in 1995 following founder members' participation in City & Guilds. What was really interesting to hear about was their 'Group Critique'. We all get stuck sometimes and having a critical friend can really help. It sounds a bit daunting but as it was explained to us what emerged was a supportive commentary that members received.

Textilia have had project running over lockdown, similar to our 4" squares but a little more challenging than a monthly colour theme. They had 3 jars, one with a selection of techniques on slips of paper, 

one with colours and one with
prompts/themes. A random slip is taken from each jar and that becomes the prompt. Some were a little easier to make than others but they were all lovely. It's a great idea!

Members have all been busy, not least Jackie who has produced yet another lovely book.