November 2019

Last Saturday brought our final official meeting for the year. Twelve of us got together for show and tell, and to enjoy a final lunch together for the year. Susan made the effort to travel from her home in Country NSW to join us in person, and we welcomed another new member to our group, boosting our numbers still further

Our exhibition for May 2020 is gaining ground and pieces. Snippets of some of the pieces being displayed next year are shown below. 

Jenny is using butterfly wings as inspiration for one of her pieces. Circles on the design called for eyelets, the decision just had to be made as to what colour and thread to work them in. The photo above is a sample worked to test out various colours and threads. The first photo is just a snippet of the final piece.

Sheila has completed another 2 butterflies for our group exhibition in May 2020 at Gallery76 Queen Street. Both were made using previously coloured fabric samples. The blue butterfly above is a hand dyed cord stitched over the lines of a stencil. The green is raised chain stitch, again using a hand dyed thread. Both are finished with machine satin stitch around the edges. 

Robyn has been working on her Needle Lace butterfly this month, thinking about what fillings stitches to use.

Jenny has been trying her hand a bobbin lace butterfly. Taking a photograph off the internet, Jenny drew up the design, worked out how many bobbins to wind, and played with Finca 40 thread. This butterfly will join the crocheted ones from last month in a final piece with other added bits and pieces.

Susan has been working on her  "Memory Quilt". The top photo shows how it fits over her king single bed, and the other is a detail. The quilt is close to being finished, and Susan is keen to have it finished. It is a paper-pieced, 3/4 inch hexagon quilt top, all done by hand, using her own fabrics. Some of the fabrics are nearly 40 years old, and some are from her Mum's dressmaking fabrics. Started over 3 years ago, with no other aim than using up scraps, it's grown like topsy to become a bed quilt. Susan added to the memories held in the patchwork by asking friends in Sydney and elsewhere to contribute fabrics, so they are sewn in too. The task comes now to work out how it will be  put  together as a 2-layer quilt, with no padding.

Above are three pieces of Suganthi's. They are  non-assessable pieces for Mary Brown's component of the Contemporary Stitch and Design Course that she has been doing. They demonstrate  heightened, high and low key pieces.

Annette Y  has completed her Drawn Fabric bookmark and sampler  submitted for the final component of the Guild's Introduction to Embroidery coarse. She will now focus on butterflies.

Sheila attended a course with Helen Parsons on the south coast of NSW , where she  spent 2 days learning collage techniques. The final piece contained donated fabrics and found elements stitched onto a heavy paper. 

The next 3 days, Sheila learned about creating sculptural works. Helen provided many unusual textiles and fibres and gave everyone permission to play.  Sheila enjoyed making a wire face and working with pantyhose and stuffing it then adding stiff fibres to the blobs. Most  successful was the stitching through foam core with a thick paper thread. Thank you to Helen for leading the course and  thank you to the fellow stitchers who were great company. 

Our little group has grown to seventeen this year, including our country members who visit in person on occasion. Our tastes, techniques, and methods of working are many and varied, though we all have a united love of stitching and playing with textiles. I wonder what 2020 will bring? Please join us next year and follow along in our adventures.

October 2019

Our meeting this month was held in conjunction with the Embroiderers Guild AGM, so we only got together after lunch. Four of us joined forces to chat, discuss the Margaret Oppen works which were on display downstairs, and show and tell in the Resource room at Guild HQ. The remainder of our group had other plans for the day.

The Embroiderers' Guild of NSW conducts a biennial competition for members called the Margaret Oppen.  The exhibition of submitted works was officially opened and prizes awarded in early October.  Six members of the group entered works into the competition which was the highest number of any group within the Guild.  We are proud of our achievement.  The theme of the competition was ' Sensations' which was addressed by all the entrants in a variety of ways.

Sheila's work for the competition was titled ' Ring-a-Ring' based on the sensation of dizziness.  The figures in the work were made of commercially available shapes which were covered in raised chain stitch using hand dyed threads.  The figures were joined into pairs and mounted on a covered base.  This was placed on a turntable so the work could be spun around.  The winning works and other entries can be found at:  https://www.instagram.com/gallery76_queenst/

Sheila also continues with a daily practice and in October, she is participating in Inktober.  Sheila's work can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/thingstitcher/

Annette's Margaret Oppen piece is titled 'AHhhhh!!! Time For A Cup Of Tea'. Annette believes  it should have been called 'Peace in the chaos of daily life".The piece consists of Pulled thread work, Applique and Surface Stitches. Annette used old fabrics, the surface stitch is on "Old Bleach" pure Irish linen. Nothing was purchased for the project, everything used was from her stash.

Robyn and Wendy's pieces for the Margaret Oppen Competition. Robyn's piece is on the left, titled 'Country'. Wendy's piece is on the right titled 'Sensations in Silk'

Robyn's  SENSATIONS journey started when stepping out of a car barefoot into the warn dry rust coloured soil of her mother’s country and finished with the cool soft blue/greens of her father’s, also many times barefoot.   

There were many sensations, both physical and emotional, created whilst coffee dying her Grandmothers cotton sheeting, collecting, drying and peeling apart the tea bags after many cups of tea with her Mother and then the feeling when the needle passing through all those beautiful textured layers with her favourite split stitch. 

Materials: Coffee and rust dyed cotton, tea bags, embroidery threads and felt backing. 

Techniques: Split stitch and Back stitching. 

Suganthi started with seahorses for her Margaret Oppen piece. Shades of blue on blue. Laid bars

She tried using crochet thread to create a base for pulled thread which  didn’t work.

She next tried linen with blanket stitch and  felted wool around the edges.

Withdrawn threads from the linen and blanket stitch to uncover the hidden seahorses.

A swirling sensation finished for the Margaret Oppen.

Artists Statement – Suganthi Singarayar

Margaret Oppen Competiton 2019

Theme: Sensations

Title: Hidden Depths

Something that you can touch, feel, see, smell, that creates a feeling (a sensation). Something that is wonderful. A swirling sensation, layers, depth, sea creatures, colour, swirls

Jenny had been playing with thread choices for a future piece of work. Her original choice of colour proved too dull for the chosen fabric so she added another fine cotton variegated thread into the mix.

The above is just a snippet of the major piece that is now happening.

These two crocheted butterflies are by Jenny. Using photographs off the internet, Jenny worked out the patterns herself using No 60 crochet thread and 0.6mm hook. There are more plans for these butterflies, including a change of colour and some added stitching.

Jenny had also finished trialing a new bobbin lace edge she wants to do. The edging  design is No 7 from the Pamela Nottingham book on Bedfordshire Lacemaking. This sample is worked in a King Tut quilting thread, and will be used at a later date to decorate something else.

Susan had been to Katoomba for a couple of exhibitions finishing this weekend. One was Wendy Tsai's "Drawing the Kedumba" (River), with some lovely big charcoal and mixed media drawings, and 6 'thread paintings' - she'd never done this before. 

There may only have been four of us present on the day, but the time went fast with all the chatting and show and tell. Next month will be our final meeting for the year, so please come back for another visit to see what we get up to.

September 2019

Our group had twelve attendees this month, including another new member, a visitor from Canberra, and a young family member of Wendy's. Susan and Donna also joined us via Zoom.

Show and tell this month begins with Marina who is undertaking the Creative Correspondence Course ( CCC) through the Embroiderers Guild NSW. One of the exercises was to explore Chain stitch

The clutch purse above is Marina's finished exercise, worked in various forms of chain stitch.

Marina  saw this stitchery and decided it was just her,  so she bought it and stitched it. She has  made it into a bag to take her projects to classes and groups. The words say:
‘I cannot count my day complete ‘til needle thread and fabric meet.’

Sheila found woven picot stitch from last month addictive. She stitched on a natural dyed raw silk fabric using her hand dyed threads. She will continue filling in around the lighter areas and then decide what to do next. 

Jenny had been working on a piece of Ukrainian Whitework, but in colour. A counted thread lover, Jenny was inspired by her friend Robyn's piece of coloured Ukrainian Whitework from a few years back. The piece is being worked on blue even weave linen in a variety of threads including Anchor Perle 8 variegated and DMC stranded.

Sheila has finished her entry for The Embroiderers' Guild of NSW Margaret Oppen competition. The works will be displayed in October at Gallery76.  She has also completed her Quilt NSW entry for the annual suitcase challenge. Only the back can be revealed  at this stage, and is shown above. She used the design on the back to quilt the work. 

Sheila has also been making butterflies for our exhibition in May of next year.  The first butterfly has stitching on a coloured paper towel.  The paper towel has been mounted onto iron-on interface for stability when stitching.  The second butterfly is machine applique using the positive and negative image.  More butterflies are in the planning stages.

Sheila's daily practice for September was to create a collagraph each day printing with a gelli plate. She incorporated Birgit Koopsen's Instagram challenge  prompts into the activity from day 3 onwards.  Interpreting the prompts in a way to incorporate the collagraph has pushed her creativity into new territories.

Sheila's work can be found at:

https://www.instagram.com/thingstitcher/

Gerri has revamped an old bag which she loves with some butterflies to brighten it up.

Annette H has finally finished one of seven cot panels bought by her  mother before her death. The idea was  so she could  hand quilt them and give them to her grandchildren when they had a baby. Annette and her sisters  have worked on them when the occasion arose and Annette has finished this  last one for her new grandson . 

Although Annette Y was unable to join us in our meeting, she has been working hard on her Introduction to Embroidery course. The above four photos show her final applique pieces that were submitted for assessment.  They demonstrate the techniques broderie perse, mola, needle-turn and the last has over stitched raw edge pieces.

Project 3 from Marin's CCC was her own choice. The task was to design the lid of a box. Romanian, Cretan, fly, and running stitches have been used.

Project 5 from Marina's CCC was 'Waves'. Marina used couching for the task which was to make a design depicting waves. Her  inspiration came from seeing a surfer surfing through a tunnel. After many attempts, this was her favourite 

Project 1 from Marina's CCC was leaves in running stitch. The task was to  walk around a park and pick leaves, draw them then make a design using a leaf or leaves. Marina's is gum leaves, which have been  stitched in green, and the lines in between depict different gum tree barks.

The activity for the meeting was picking a stitch name at random from a box then stitching it. Marina is  continuing to pick stitch names and when finished, will make it into a little purse.

Project 2 from Marina's CCC was the sun. 
The task was  look at pictures of the sun and design a depiction.  Marina's is the sun in the centre  with warm colours on one side warming half the earth and cool colours on the other side cooling the other side of the earth. Fly stitch has been used.

The beginning of the butterfly adventure by Annette H. Butterflies start life as an egg, then become a caterpillar. This piece started life in our simple exercise class on circles that Jenny gave us. Her scribbles translated beautifully into a caterpillar of a non specific type. So far it is felt shapes on cotton fabric that will be embossed with stitch.

From the back of Annette H's cupboard, a  UFO in Mountmellick work which she will try to finish. Worked on cotton fabric in Perle 5 thread, the piece has a buttonhole edge rather than the traditional knitted edge.

Annette H's  chosen stitch for the day was feather stitch. She  tried it using 3 different threads,  then tried Cretan stitch after reading about it in an old 1967 copy of the Record.

Susan has been exploring crochet, to expand her skills. She is  trying medallions from Nicky Epstein's Crochet on the Edge,  having fun with the textures and other techniques. 

 Susan also tried some 'inchies challenge' after Sheila's practice last month.

  One of Susan's drawings from her regular Tuesday Drawing group in Bathurst. 

Jenny is on another learning curve, trying out a new bobbin lace edge design. It is design No7 from Pamela Nottingham's book 'Bedfordshire Lacemaking.

Gerri has been busy making teddies, towels and owls for a stall that supports cancer care patients.

It is wonderful to watch our new members grow in their stitching, and fabulous to see how our monthly exercises can take us in new directions, both up and out. As our numbers grow, our skills grow, and so does our creativity. So come back next month to see our creativity in action, and see which direction it will take us.