Christmas Cheer

( Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 16th December 2013

It's always good to end the year with a good clear out and judging by the size of our sales table this month, everyone had taken that advice to heart.  One person's clutter is another's treasure and so we swapped and purchased new items for our stash, raising a total of £34 for the coffers.  Left over books will be recycled for the next sales table on April 28th (note the change of date to accommodate Easter) and any left over fabric was donated to Birdcage or made into craft bags for African charity workers known to Enid Pyrah.

The competition to make something using the colour silver attracted a small number of entries, each beautifully crafted and very different.  Our usual voting system declared that Clare Hutchinson with her Wild Woman brooch, was the winner.

In the hectic whirl that engulfs us during the run up to Christmas, it was lovely just to sit and chat, show each other the projects we have completed and enjoy the mince pies and seasonal cakes on offer.

Happy New Year!

Tudor tales

(Photos taken and reproduced with the permission of Lyn Cunliffe. Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 18th November

When a talk starts with a striptease in a church you know that things are going to get weird! 

We welcomed Anne Boleyn or rather Lyn Cunliffe from Hathaways of Haworth, to our meeting this month.  Lyn came dressed in full Tudor garb, all made by her own fair hands.  However it was the mannequin that was stripped as she explained the complex layers of clothes and especially sleeves, that were required to dress a Tudor lady.  Whilst we might not appreciate the multiple layers of garments, we were all envious of the fur-lined bodice as we sat and shivered in our coats in the barely-warm church.

There may have been a bit of Yorkshire about the Tudor tailors because the most expensive cloths were used frugally.  This meant that only the bits on show were faced with luxurious material whilst the rest was fairly plain.  It also lead to the use of false sleeves that gave the impression of many layers when in fact they reached from elbow to wrist.  One of the "half sleeves" in brocade cloth would have cost a whole year's wages for a servant so fabric was highly prized.  We learned that Elizabeth I owned over 2000 dresses when she died, but she was not adverse to the modern concept of mending and making do and clothes were frequently refashioned and recycled.  

Lyn carefully researches her costumes using paintings and contemporary accounts of clothing but it is also by physically making an item that she gains insight into how it would be constructed and worn.  The talk was highly entertaining and a fascinating way to learn about costume.

Making a difference

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 21st October

We meet almost every month and we smile and say "hello". We will chat about our sewing and perhaps our families, but how much do we really know about our fellow members?

When our own Chris Mitchell stood up to talk to us about her project Bags of Difference few of us could have suspected that we had invited such a powerful source of goodness into our midst!  The story starts in 2008 after a visit to Kisiizi hospital in southern Uganda.  Chris had gone out with husband Ed and some other friends to volunteer in the  school at Kisiizi.  She soon realised that even free schools in Uganda requires their pupils to wear a uniform and purchase their own stationary - a tall order when even the most qualified staff only earn £30 per month.  Chris wondered how she could help the local people supplement their income and give their children the education they so desperately wanted. 

Inspiration came in the form of brightly coloured African fabric.  Taking several meters of cloth home, Chris made patchwork bags and sold them to friends. This gave her the seed fund to return the next year and not only buy more fabric but teach the ladies of Kisiizi how to make their own bags. Chris now sells the bags on behalf of the workers and sends every penny back to Africa - no commission, no costs, no overheads.  Over 200 children have benefitted as a result of her dedication and inspiration. 

Chris and her husband spend much of their time giving talks to introduce the project and sell more bags - in fact it was Ed who did much of the talking because Chris had a particularly nasty cough.  The project is very personal, they know all the workers and their stories of heroic effort in order to give their children the best start in life. When you buy a bag you understand a little of what a difference your money will make to someone thousands of miles away in a corner of Uganda.  Thank you Chris!

Weekend Wonders

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

27-29th September 2013

There has been a carnival atmosphere in Skipton this weekend with not one, but two fantastic events taking place and the Embroiderers' Guild have been at both!  

The Yarndale Festival brought the town to a standstill (quite literally since there were so many cars and coaches descending on the venue).  Miles of bunting made from crocheted pennants sent from all around the world festooned the halls of the usually dour Auction Mart.  They continued outside, around the trees, along the fences, through the park and into town leading the many thousands of visitors to this hub of creativity. The Guild had display in the entrance hallway with examples of work and details of our programme for this year and 2014. Many of us took turns to man the stand and we enjoyed meeting visitors from as far away as America, Germany and Spain.  Guild Secretary and organiser, Brigida Martino said "It was lovely to talk to people about the Guild and hear about their embroidery projects. We have been trying to dispel the myth that you need to be "good at embroidery" to join the Guild. Everyone is welcome at our meetings."

The other, but no less important event, was the Skipton Puppet Festival which took place at various venues around the town, including several marquees, a yurt and a very tiny caravan.  

Over the last six months a group of Guild members have been working with Broughton Road Women's Group and artist Jackie Lunn to make a triptych of story cloths telling how group of farmers from Kashmir swapped a life in the fields for the textile mills of North Yorkshire in the 1960's.  

The cloths are made from felted wool and hand-painted calico and are embellished with the stories of life in the old country, the journey to Skipton, work in the local mills and settling in the community.  They tell of changing means of communication: telegram, letter, cassette tapes, phone and now Skype.  It is a celebration of the women's cultural roots and their life as modern British-Asians.  The cloths were displayed on board the Kennet barge which has also played a part in this story as it brought bales of Australian wool from the Liverpool docks to the mills of North Yorkshire.

It has been an exhausting but thoroughly enjoyable weekend.  Thank you to everyone who helped to make both of these events happen.

Photos Brigida Martino, Claire Ketteman

AGM

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 16th September
Members returned this month from their summer holidays full of tales of quaint haberdashery shops and textile treasures gleaned from far-flung places.  We started with our usual stitching session and an informal show-and-tell as items were brought in for the forthcoming Yarndale Festival which takes place 28/29th September at Skipton Auction Mart.  Nan Clough brought in the fabulous crochet blanket shown in the photo.

After an excellent Jacob's join lunch we settled down to the AGM.  Jane Holmes read the minutes of last year's AGM and thanked the outgoing committee for all their hard work. Jane and Eileen Hillery resigned as Chair and Treasurer respectively and Jan Dowman resigned from the committee so that she may focus on Grassington Guild.  Jill Maloney was duly elected as the new Chair along with Claire Ketteman as Treasurer and Brigida Martino as Secretary.  Christine Patrick takes over as Programme Secretary for 2014. Clare Hutchinson and Sally McGonigle join the committee for 2013/14.

Photo:  Clare Hutchinson

Holy Trinity Church Flower Festival

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Friday 23 - Monday 26 August

Summer is always a busy time in Skipton, the town is known as the Gateway to the Dales and there is a steady stream of visitors from all over the country coming to enjoy the fantastic scenery and many outdoor pursuits on offer.  But over the Bank Holiday weekend this stream turned to a flood brought on by the lovely weather. 

This was good news for Holy Trinity Church and their Flower Festival which was based on the story of Noah.  The church was bedecked in a riot of colourful arrangements created by members of the congregation, other churches and organisations from the local area. Even Mr and Mrs Noah had been fashioned from plants!

The Guild mounted an exhibition of embroidered cushions with an animal or flower theme that reflects the broad range of techniques practised by our members.  We were keen to show that we're are not an elitist group and so we exhibited a full spectrum (or should that be rainbow?) of work, from the simplest doodle stitch to the most intricate stump work.  We even had a corner dedicated to unfinished pieces!  Visitors were full of admiration and praise for our work and we met some lovely people over the weekend.

Magic needles

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Saturday 27th July

Saturday saw the second of our two workshops with Kathryn Thompson, doll-maker, sewing teacher and all-together lovely lady.  As we unpacked assorted body parts, Kathryn was keen to check that we had completed our homework and that everyone had achieved the correct amount of stuffing.  No time for idle chit-chat, we were soon attaching limbs to torsos using some scarily big needles.

If we had thought that fingers were difficult, nothing had prepared us for heads and faces.  First we were given a refresher course in drawing and the relative proportions of eyes, noses and mouths.  We needed a few practice runs on plain paper before we were let loose on cloth.  Once we had stuffed the heads, making sure that noses remained filled with polyester, we traced an outline of the face onto the head using a soft brown pencil.  Taking another magic needle and some strong thread, we followed a doll-maker's version of join-the-dots adding little stitches here and there to give contours to the face - bringing it to life.

Now Kathryn has been making dolls for many years and she has amassed a vast array of coloured pencils, pigment pens, gel pens and other mark-making tools that she uses to create faces.  None of this is any good without years of experience colouring faces.  And so we came to her with our pudgy dolls heads, with their asymmetric features caused by inexpert stitching and with a few stokes of a pencil she had transformed them into glorious personalities.

With heads attached, we could now see the possibilities of our dolls.  Miss Haversham emerged with greying locks, a Geisha sat serenely in the corner, an ice maiden glistened with glitter pen make-up and a Spring sprite suddenly adopted hair which Amy Winehouse would have been proud of!

Our dolls are not quite finished but the photo shows what can be achieved with some magic needles and a very good teacher.  Thank you Kathryn!

Places and the Stitches Between

(Photos taken and reproduced with the permission of Hannah Lamb. Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 15th July 

This month, Saltaire-based artist Hannah Lamb took us on a journey through her inspiration for her collections of textile art. From early days as an graduate from Manchester Metropolitan University, producing exquisite vessels out of vintage gloves and then as a designer-maker creating quirky pincushions to hold a collection of found objects. Her decision to study for a Masters degree gave new confidence to her practise and this shows in her choice of materials and experimental approach to printing and dying.

Our branch meetings can often result in a busy exchange of information, but Hannah's quiet approach brought instant calm to the afternoon.  She is an advocate of walking for meditation and as a creative source of inspiration and this has been the driving force for her most recent work.  The leaves she collects from a nearby wood provide both colour and stencils for a Shibori style of dying.  She even notices the weeds that grow between cracks in the pavement and elevates them to high status objects when she creates cyanotype prints on cloth or postcards.

Her stitching adds emphasis to her work: small button-hole stitch around a vintage broderie-anglaise top in just the right shade of citrus tells you that she is looking for signs of spring.  This work formed part of her collection "In Search of Green" which was recently on show at The Bowery in Headingly.  But it was the intensely personal work "Visible Mending" that she created for an exhibition of War at the Yorkshire Craft Centre, Bradford that resonated with me.  The piece reflected the wartime experiences of her grandmother and great uncle by the use of two different forms of stitching that took place during the Second World War:  traditional embroidery depicting an idealised English cottage and garden that was issued to service personnel for recreation and the utilitarian darning that was necessary to keep clothing wearable in POW camps.

It was a great pleasure to spend the afternoon in the company of such an inspirational tutor.

Model Students

(Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Saturday 6th July 2013

This weekend we welcomed back Kathryn Thompson for another fantastic workshop.  We are making a "Sewing Sprite" - an art doll by any other name.  Kathryn dispenses pearls of wisdom and hard earned experience in equal measure and you always learn something new!

There was a lot to pack into the day and we had been given homework to prepare beforehand.  Very soon small, shapely legs started to appear around the room, brought to life by copious amounts of polyester stuffing and clever use of surgical-issue haemostats.  Once Kathryn was satisfied that we had achieved the correct level of firmness (and no cellulite) we moved on to the body. This was more straightforward but given a quirky twist by the application of snippets of selvedge to add an interesting detail to the bodice.

After lunch we tackled the bit that had all been dreading- hands with FINGERS!  Kathryn was kind and gave us a choice of hands with varying degrees of difficulty but several brave souls tackled the full five-finger option.  The finger-turning tools took some getting use to but once we had mastered the technique little hands  were not as difficult as we imagined.

We have been sent away to continue stuffing and to make a head.  The workshop recommences on Saturday 27th of July.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

(Photos taken and reproduced with the permission of Dale Keaton. Images are the property of Skipton Branch of The Embroiderers' Guild)

Monday 17th June

This intriguing title does not refer to the Spaghetti Western but examples from the huge collection of exhibits held by Bradford Museum's Service.

We were lucky to have Collections Officer, Dale Keeton come to our meeting on Monday and tell us why he had dubbed them Good, Bad or Ugly.  With over 800 dresses to choose from, Dale introduced us to one of his favourites, a simple cotton muslin with a woven square pattern and fine red print which was around 200 years old. One of the best things about this talk was that we actually got to handle the items and could see not only how the dress was made, but also how it had been altered and repaired.  It had clearly been someone else's favourite dress!

A heavy black-crepe mourning dress was revealed to have an exotic lining that only its wearer knew about, whilst its flirtatious shape was designed to catch the eye of a suitable husband.

We learned about social history via hat-making in Luton; obscure legislation governing the length of hat pins thanks to the activities of the Suffragettes and had some pretty racy discussions about underwear!  Every item had a story worth telling and none more so than a shoe made of emu feathers that was allegedly worn by a murderer so as not to leave a trace.

Closer to home there were samples of silk brocade made for Queen Victoria by a firm in nearby Bingley and Charlotte Bronte's gloves which had been left by mistake.

Bad weather, illness and work commitments had kept Dale from us on previous occasions but he made it this time and it was definitely well worth waiting for.