Silk painting workshop with Paula Maxfield - 16 January

Following on from Paula’s fascinating talk and demonstration last February, members were keen to invite her back to give a workshop on silk painting. Paula is a self-taught ‘Painter of silk’ who started out as a designer-dressmaker specialising in silk wedding dresses. Her delightful silk painting is now sold through a wide range of exhibitions, craft fairs and galleries and she is a member of The Craft Guild of West Lancashire, The Batik Guild, The Guild of Silk Painters and Silk Painters International.

During the workshop you will have the opportunity to do at least two pieces; learning how the dye spreads into the silk, playing with colour, using gutta/outliner and experimenting with different painting techniques. No previous experience is required, so why not give it a try?

This pretty French vineyard is one of the pictures you can do at the workshop.

The cost of the workshop is £20 for members of Parbold Embroiderers’ Guild and £23 for visitors, materials not included. Advance booking is required.

If you would like to book a place on the workshop or enquire further, please send an email to Karen at:
parboldeg-silkworkshop@yahoo.co.uk

(Please note that you may have to copy and paste this address into the ‘To’ box in your usual mail application to send an email successfully. If you have not received a reply within 24 hours please try again.)

Thanks to Paula for allowing us to reproduce images of her work here. Visit her website www.artonsilk.co.uk to see more of her work.

Felt, Stitch, Texture - Workshop with Sheila Smith - March 20th

Sheila’s talk may have been cancelled as a result of the bad weather, but we are pleased that she will still be visiting us in March to give a workshop on felt making. For those of you not familiar with Sheila’s work, she is a very experienced felt designer and teacher from North Yorkshire who has written several exciting books on felt making.

Sheila’s approach to felt making is really innovative and this will be a great opportunity to learn some of the techniques in her most recent book “Felt to stitch: creative felting for textile artists”, which will be covered in the workshop:

Felt, Stitch, Texture

The workshop takes a contemporary approach to felt making aiming to produce interesting surface textures by combining non-felting fibres such as silk and linen with the wool, during the felting process. In addition simple Shibori techniques will introduce three dimensional shapes to be further enhanced by stitch.

This multi-media approach is great fun and provides plenty of scope for originality.

The workshop will cost £25 for members and £29 for visitors, not including materials which will be available to purchase from Sheila on the day. As usual, bring your own lunch; tea and coffee provided. As we won’t now be meeting until February, you can email Karen at this address to book a place:
parboldeg-feltworkshop@yahoo.co.uk (temporary email address).

Thanks to Sheila for kindly providing the above images of her work and allowing us to publish them here. You can see more of her work on her website, www.feltbydesign.co.uk

Sheila’s talk is also being rearranged and we now hope to welcome her in the Autumn to speak about "The contemporary felt scene”.

SATURDAY'S MEETING - CANCELLED

Sorry to have to inform you all that the talk by Sheila Smith has had to be cancelled.
Sheila lives in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, and I think they are experiencing even worse weather than we have here. She sends her apologies and I am sure we will be able to hear the talk at a later date this year.

One of the committee will be in touch later about what is being arranged, but the forecast for the next few days does not look good.

PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM

I have been asked to make a textile cover for the branch photograph album which will be on display at our Open Day and I felt it would be far nicer if everyone contributed towards this. 

At our December meeting I requested small pieces of work from our members, no bigger than about 3” square (sorry don’t do centimetres!!). 
These should have a border all round for attaching to a backing which I will be making, but please – no text or lettering of any kind as there will be a finished title on the cover which might then clash!  The piece should have your name attached to the back of the work. 

There is to be no theme, as the Album itself covers a wide variety of  Talks, Hands-on sessions and Workshops, and if you want to have a look at it next time you come to a meeting, I am sure there will be something  to inspire you or remind you of  things you have already done – maybe a part finished piece started at one of our workshops, or a small sample done at a Hands-on session.
The album is always on display on the Welcome Table, where you sign in,  together with a folder which holds hard copies of the Branch Blog pages, for members who do not have access to the internet.  This might also help, as some of the photographs show work in progress as well as finished pieces.

I want to have the work completed for our April meeting so PLEASE get your pieces to me in plenty of time – the sooner the better – as I have other stitching commitments for exhibitions and don’t want to have that snowed under feeling at the last minute.
Thank you all in anticipation!!!!!!!!!

Still very icy here.
Sandra

MORE SNOW PICS!!

Following my request - a couple of 'pics' for you from -
Karen Hurrell our Programme Secretary who lives in Chorley and Ann Christy (Regional Secretary and personal friend) who lives across the water from me in Lytham.

I was too much of a coward to go out in the garden to take close up pics, but they are obviously much braver (and younger) than me!!!

Karen

Ann

Karen has a couple more pics on her blog - Serpentine Stitches. Many thanks to you both.

I notice that the snow is starting to melt here now but the road is still a sheet of ice, so another day indoors I think.
Hope to see you all on Saturday.

SNOW, SNOW, GLORIOUS……….

As I said before I am not a lover of snow, but today I have sat indoors in the warm and by the fire, watching a load of snow (about 4 or 5”) deposit itself on our garden and how lovely it looks. 
Thought I would show you a few more photo’s of my snowy garden in Banks – a place not known for heavy snowfall, as being near the coast we are supposed to have higher temperatures to keep the snow away, but something has gone wrong!! 

You can actually see the snow falling in this one and not a bird in sight.

 
Taken at about 10a.m when it had been snowing for a while.

 
Another lonely seat and still no birds – I was hoping for a robin to show up.

View from my front door.

How about other members send me their ‘pics’ and I will try to include some of them – just e.mail them if you have any.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2010

Hope you had a good  Christmas and here’s hoping 2010 will be a healthy and happy year for you all.

We are looking forward to our Open Day on 8th May, of which you will be hearing a lot over the next few months, but in the meantime we have some very interesting monthly meetings and full day workshops coming up for you.

JANUARY MEETING – Saturday 9th

Our first meeting of the year promises to be a good one with Sheila Smith talking about ‘The Contemporary Felt Scene’
Sheila is a very well respected Felt maker who teaches in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
A former Chair of the International Feltmakers’  she writes regularly for textile and embroidery magazines.  She is also the author of two books ‘Felt to Stitch’ and ‘Embellish, Stitch and Felt’.

I just hope now that the weather will be kind to us as Sheila lives in Thirsk – the far frozen hills of Yorkshire!!!!  (Apologies to my Yorkshire friends – one of the best places on earth, though now I live in Lancashire, perhaps I shouldn’t say that either!!!!)   That’s what comes from moving around this lovely country of ours.

We have also planned for Sheila to hold a full day workshop for us in March and we will be taking bookings for this at our February meeting . Several members of the branch attended a workshop she did last year at Cedar Farm Gallery and I know they would all agree it is worth attending one of Sheila’s classes – book early as I think this could be a popular day.

NEXT MEETING - JANUARY 9TH - COLOUR RAFFLE

This month's raffle colours are based on this little creature - called a Spearer Mantis Shrimp.
Sounds quite scary to me but lovely colours - pinky brown, mauve, yellow and cream.
Look forward to seeing the collection of threads, fabrics, beads, buttons etc.
Good luck everyone.