Embroidered Paperweights

 Today we did a workshop on embroidered paperweights - basically a stone! 

Step one, find a stone; it can be a boring stone or an interesting one with a nice fossil or colouring on that could be a feature. A certain member who shall remain nameless brought an enormous stone but rose to the challenge.

Step two, cover your stone with wadding, leaving a peep hole for any interesting bits. Stitch the wadding into place using bits and pieces - no-one will see it so no fuss required.

Step three, stitch fabric scraps to the wadding. Here's examples in various stages.

Step four, add embroidery stitches and any embellishments!

They all looked lovely and it's a great way to use up odds and ends and little scraps.

Skipton Castle update

 Here's an update on our Skipton Castle Conduit Court piece. Sebastian Fattorini of SKipton Castle has had our large embroidery framed and it's now on display in the castle shop. It looks great! We'd like to thank Sebastian for his enthusiasm about the project and we're really pleased that the embroidery has a permanent home. If you're ever visiting the castle (highly recommended) then do go and have a look.

Drafting a dress pattern

 Wow, what a great morning we had. Saima, one of our members, took us through the process of drafting a dress pattern for our personal measurements. It was quite an involved process but Saima took us through it step by step and explained and demonstrated brilliantly.

We had a formula to use once we had taken our personal measurements - in inches rather than cm - the numbers are smaller 😂. Saima then showed us how to transfer our numbers onto dressmakers tissue to make a pattern. The whole process was really interesting and we took loads of notes; fingers crossed we can work out what we meant! Thanks to Saima for a really useful workshop.

We also had our first Travelling pages swap and welcomed new members. Serena brought in the book of the blackwork coif project for the V&A too.

Merry Christmas!

🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 🎄🎄🎄 

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Today we had our annual Jacob's Join lunch - lovely as usual; of particular note was Sue's fruit cake with no eggs, sugar or butter! It was delicious especially with some cheese. 

We had our Christmas card swap and a round up of things to come next year: our raffle will be monthly prompts based on famous paintings and we will also be launching a new round of Travelling Pages, the monthly prompt will be the raffle painting, so that should prove interesting. Also on the cards is a little series of posts on here and our other social media featuring members' favourite stitches or techniques. We have a packed programme for 2024, so if you fancy joining us, drop us an email.

We had a display of items made on workshops this last 12 months, all of which have featured on the blog and in addition there were sketch books of techniques from Gail's sessions introducing those fairly new to stitching to various stitches and traditions, and also a couple of mini quilted hangings from Anne Brooke's stitching hour. Lots of photos below in no particular order. I'm off to make Sue's cake!

    

                                                 

...and last but not least, Serena's hat!