March meeting

 We had a super busy meeting today. We had PAT testing going on with sewing machines and various electrical bits and bobs for upcoming workshops. We had a bit of a catch up with the Skipton Castle project - hope one to our Instagram to see a sneaky peek of some of the squares so far.

Pauline led a mini workshop making cards based on Katrina Witten's work.

Gail was running her Techniques Notebook on Dorset buttons with a bit of a catch up on previous topics.

And then there was some general stitching.

Deck the Halls

 What a busy meeting we had today. Susie ran a fabulous workshop making felt Christmas decorations - everything from elves, gingerbread men, baubles and stars to little gnomes, which proved very popular.

Here's Sven and Ivan completed and some photos of the day in progress.

We also launched a major new project for 2023. We are producing a large group piece in collaboration with Skipton Castle. The work will be of the Conduit Court at Skipton Castle and when finished will have a permanent home in the display space in the castle's education room. More details to follow, but this is the photo we are working with. It should look great when out all comes together and we're really looking forward to getting started.

We have had quite a few new members recently and it has become apparent that many haven't been through City & Guilds or similar programmes and so while they enjoy stitch they perhaps haven't been shown how to do some techniques. Gail to the rescue! Starting in January she will be running a Techniques Notebook session in the meetings; essentially taking a different technique each month and explaining the origins and teaching the technique. This is such a great idea and we think it will be useful for all members who can partake as and when they feel inclined. January's technique is blackwork and further techniques will be added to the programme and can be viewed on the appropriate tab on this blog. We hope this will give people the confidence to try something new.

And finally, we had one of our fabulous Jacobs Join lunches which are always delicious. 

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas 

& Peaceful New Year!

Eco dyeing

 Today we had a great talk from Diane Morgan about her adventures with eco-dyeing. Diane lives in Brittany and also brought lots of lovely French textiles for us too. She give us lots of really interesting and useful information about her process, from scouring and mordanting fabric to the the placement of leaves and botanicals; she also explained the use of an 'iron blanket'. To top it all shelf us with detailed instructions so we can all have a go.

Not content with dyeing her fabrics she also makes some beautiful books and labels with dyed paper. Claire and Sue did a turn on the catwalk with some clothes that had been dyed. Diane made a lovely cushion for us to raffle too, so we had a really enjoyable morning.

And of course there was the usual stitching

Sue had been on an Anne Brooke course

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: