February Colour Raffle

The Rose  - my favourite flower.

‘ROMANTIC RED’

Project Linus News

Prior to the Branch afternoon meeting, February 12th, the Village Hall has been booked for the first gathering of the Project Linus Group.

Commencing at 11.30 Lesley Mercer, Lancashire
Co-ordinator will attend with advice and supplies, AND to take with her any completed blankets or quilts – so please bring anything you have made or are still making so that we can all see how we are getting on.
We will also discuss how often to hold these meetings and how we feel they should be run and funded.

Please be prompt as we have to make sure we clear everything away by 1.30 for the setting up of the Branch afternoon Hands-on session.
If you need any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.

JANUARY MEETING–Sketchbooks

Well, I thought I had a lot of my own sketchbooks, but Ann’s collection was truly amazing.
She could even go back to her school days (of course - not so very long ago!!) and fascinated us all with memories of her family and their technical drawing skills which had rubbed off and influenced her work from a very young age.

Ann talked us through a variety of sketchbooks with the aid of a Power Point presentation; some to do with various courses she had done and her most creative was her ‘Chinese Book’ for her City & Guilds in Creative Sketchbooks’ taken as a distance learner with Linda and Laura Kemshall.  This is shown below.

I have included photographs of some individual pages below just to give you all a flavour of some of her ideas – lots based on holiday photographs and drawings and some on project work she is doing with ‘One Step On’.

Based on the Tate Gallery in St. Ives.

Work in progress

A small finished piece from one of her design ideas.

Thank you Ann for a very entertaining and informative afternoon.

Our member who gave a vote of thanks commented that she had not before realised that a sketchbook could  be a visual diary and not a finished masterpiece – you can keep dipping into it for ideas for many years to come.

SO how about it – let’s see more of them – bring yours in to our meetings so we can see how you are getting on.  Who knows some of your pages might be shown on the Blog eventually.
One drawing a week is a good place to start – go out and buy that empty sketchbook now and get drawing, sticking – whatever you want and good luck!!!

JANUARY colour raffle

SILVER

JANUARY MEETING–Talk by Ann Christy on Sketchbooks

Ann’s talk is about her collection of sketchbooks and her experience as a distance learner taking a City & Guilds level 2 course in Creative Sketchbooks.  

She starts with her early interest in drawing and painting, going back 20 - 30 years or more, showing some of those earlier pieces and demonstrating how she has developed her style to the sort of sketchbook work that she does now.

The pictures below show some of her sketchbook pages.

CHRISTMAS SNOW ?

To our amazement here on the coast we had a fall of about 10” (25cm) of snow on Friday night and now on Sunday afternoon it is still here much to our amazement – never known this to happen  before, certainly not in the last 10 years we have lived here.

Thought you might like to see what our garden looks like – if you would like to mail me any pics you might have, I will get them onto the blog as soon as I can.

A rather damp sit down here!!!

Love the patterns made by the frozen snow on the branches.

 
Our holly tree devoid of berries – eaten by the blackbirds.

 
This looks a bit of a ‘cool’ hotel!

Our pots look a bit swamped here – it just shows how deep the snow is.
Hope it all disappears by next Friday – going to our daughter’s for Christmas.

Have a good holiday – Happy Christmas and a healthy New Year.

KIMONO – an entertainment

A very different extended meeting  for December was well received by all members who attended. A fascinating talk, demonstration and hands-on session with Katie Chaplin on all things Japanese.

First of all Katie demonstrated ‘dressing a Kimono’ on a mannequin called Dolly!  The layers of silk wrapped and tied onto the body was quite amazing – I think I counted 15 in all and some are shown in the photographs below.  Most of these are used to ‘fill out’ the body to give a straight look and Katie started off with a white cotton base garment; padding around the waist to thicken (not many Westerners would need this I think!).      
The next layer in pink, had long falling sleeves to signify that the wearer is looking for a husband.  Yet more layers to fill out the waist area, then came the Kimono itself – mostly green and orange.

     
The Kimono Katie used was 45 years old – hand painted with some couched gold on the flowers of the front panel.
Mostly worn by girls at their coming of age at 20 and at New Year.  They must be worn with the front crossed left over right as the Western way of women’s dress – right over left – in Japan, is only worn that way on a corpse!!!

   The OBI that Katie used was gold thread woven into a heavy silk.
This gets wrapped around the middle, tied at the back and folded to form a bird (Little Sparrow) at the back.

  
Finally a fan is tucked into the front of the Obi and wooden shoes are worn with split toe white cotton socks.

Katie then performed the traditional Japanese tea ceremony – very calming and carried out in complete silence.

After a lunch break we then re-gathered for a ‘hands-on’ go at Furoshiki gift wrapping using fabric squares, which can be used to wrap almost anything.  Some pictures are shown below.

 
Some of our members with a collection of the work.  I think some people might be wrapping their presents a bit differently this Christmas!! 
A big thank you to Katie for a fascinating and very different meeting.

 
Katie, who has studied both in UK and Japan, uses vintage Japanese fabrics to create a variety of textile pieces, as well as doing talks and workshops – more information from her website www.japancrafts.co.uk