Information from the East Midlands Region

Following Dora Mack's announcement at Festival of Stitch in Lutterworth that she  would be standing down as Chairman at the AGM in September 2011, you may not be aware of how a new chairman is voted in?


When you receive your next copy of Contact you will see that a call for a new Chairman for the East Midlands Region will appear, as the role of a Regional Chairman is voted on by all individual members of the Embroiderers' Guild.  The Region (and Guilds) can propose a 'name' , with that person's agreement, that they wish and after voting and if successful it is ratified at the National AGM in 2012.

 

  As with any democracy, if you want to make a difference use your voteThe Call is in the next Contact  - names, C.V's and voting slips will be in the January 2012 'Contact' with a closing date before the AGM.

Meeting: 7th July 2011

There has been a change of speaker for this meeting.  Barbara Akers will deliver her 'Vintage Medley' in July as she was unable to fulfill her original date. Beryl Cross has kindly agreed to swap for the September meeting. Barbara runs an antique shop in Ashbourne and will share her vintage lace and textiles.

For the exhibition at Created Gallery would you please bring named exhibits - we have very little so far from the black and white work folders or from the Picasso competition - we know you all produced some wonderful pieces so don't be shy - it is meant to showcase what can come out of a guild meeting - work in progress is absolutely fine.

 

We need a name for the exhibition too - so get your thinking caps on.

 

 If we get sufficient work from you we possibly could consider a small showcase at Fred's haberdashers too - but there is no exhibition without work to put in......

Current Projects 2011

The National Guild proposal for the Olympics is to create a series of postcards for a visiting nation. The country drawn out of the hat for Chesterfield was Moldovia. There are very specific instructions about the construction of these postcards, which need to be completed by March 2012. We will put an evening on the next programme to the creation of these cards, but we would like a few volunteers to lead on this project please. It could end up as a social event away from the usual guild meetings in order to get together to design and construct these.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/moldova

Anne Menary will run a workshop for this project later in 2011:

each postcard will:

.be 6"x4" in a landscape format

.resemble an opened out concertina book of postcards

.have the national flag as the top postcard

.scenes or aspects of the country below eg costume currency, customs, fauno, flora, embroidery, landmarks etc,

.the postcards will be stitched together along the long (6") edge using a suitable stitch to enable folding and packing for storage and transportation

.laced over stiff card of an appropriate size so the finished card measures 6"x4"

.have the backs finished with calico

 .the preferred minimum no. of cards in a set is 9 and a max of 15 - of course we can do more than one set!

.they should have 2 brass rings sewn to the top of the strip ready for hanging 1.5" in from each side edge and placed so half the ring shows above the top edge - rings to be supplied by region for uniformity - from regional day.

.to be completed by end March 2012

Looking Back

Below is a selection from the newsletters written between 2005 and 2008. I stepped down as newsletter editor in October 2008 so have no more archive material. If anyone has anything they would like to share for 2009-10 please let me know

2008 Joan Currie - Conservator at Cusworth

In October we met Joan Currie – “Looking at the past for contemporary expression.”  Joan, a member of North Notts. Guild.,  introduced us to her work behind the scenes  as a volunteer in the costume store of Cusworth Hall http://www.cusworth-hall.co.uk/ 

Cusworth Hall was built in the 1740s and is in a parkland setting on the outskirts of Cusworth village in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. The Hall is now the Museum of South Yorkshire Life and its collections depict life in the locality over the last 200 years.

Quoting from a Beryl Bainbridge thriller ‘The Dressmaker’ she gave away her feelings of smoothing the cloth before cutting; Joan was a dressmaker whilst her family were growing up, supplementing her income before returning to teaching. Joan now gives up her day off from the paid job to voluntarily catalogue over 400 hanging garments in the museum collection – in chronological order covering a period of 200 years! Her reward is, of course, the opportunity to view and research these garments; as little as 5% of many museum collections, including this one are ever available to public view at any one time.  Joan works with a conservator, with minimum handling of each fragile garment, researching by looking, Joan will wear 3-4 pairs of white cotton gloves in a day, in order to protect the clothes from her touch. Acid and grease from hands will spoil cloth, particularly silk.

Part of Joan’s project included making 400 padded coat hangers on which to hang the garments!  Joan has a list of 12 questions to cover for every single garment in order to catalogue it – including who/what made it, features of the garment etc.  A risk assessment is carried out before lifting any single garment from the wardrobe – look but don’t touch – until she finally gets to gently look inside the garment for construction methods or even labels to date it.

The pay off for this labour of love is the inspiration it provides her for her works of art. Joan captures the feeling of the garments in words; she might read books of the era, fact or fictional literature relating to the theme or period – an example given was “The Mill on the Floss.”  Some parts of the garments that have inspired her are buttons, Chinese knots on Edwardian dress, rows of bobbles on tea gowns, lacing, “frills and furbelows”.

Joan exhibits her fine art textile pieces with a group in London and showed one piece based on women’s suffrage, votes for woman, the need and capacity to earn money as a woman in the Bronte era etc as inspiration– it became a long narrow piece in silk paper with chains, but also with French knots – a sign of friendship and love in the early part of the 20^th century.  Another piece showed recession and death 1911-1917.

Joan gave us a truly inspiring account of her voluntary role and the reward she receives and I hope it might inspire others to follow her route. 

2007 In Stitches with Clare Bryan

In September Clare Bryan had us “In Stitches” with her life in machine embroidery. Clare came from a family of ‘makers’ but began as a hopeless sewer, preferring paint and pencils as her medium for art. However, following an absent minded calamity during her college years, when she left all her art materials on the train – lost forever she needed urgently to find a replacement medium with which to complete her graphic design homework that weekend. She found it in her mother’s ‘stash’ and has never looked back. With her drawing skills combined with textile, 3D, texture and colour Clare moved on from Manchester Polytechnic to Loughborough; transforming her work with bold colour and pattern raising the surface with collage, bonding fabrics to create backgrounds for machining and stylising her subjects to cartoon-like characters she developed her own unique style.

  

Clare is a member of The 62 Group; her influences are varied. A Flemish 15^th Century artist Robert Campin’s Madonna with the Child (detail)

is a good example of her interest in pictures that take you through the picture and out (of the window) in to the landscape beyond. Perspective draws you in to the pictures.

 full of symbolism, shows the audience viewing the marriage scene through the mirror at the back of the painting

a scene Clare later uses in her own work , borrowing the structures of the paintings to create her own versions, but bought up to date!

Again borrowing from real life, Clare collects pattern from China designs of the 40’s and 50’s to provide inspiration for floor coverings in her pictures and other detail.

Clare gradually developed from simple calico and line stitch to more heavily stitched backgrounds; reflecting grief and suspended reality in her life for a period, her colour palette changed from bold and bright to greys, greens and sludge colours with surreal designs. Clare moved on and moved to Lincolnshire to the Pea Room to help set up the studios and gallery there; her life was completely different, being a city girl landing in the flat countryside her pictures began to record her new life with scenes of the journeys the landscape, the aircraft overhead and the plane spotters below.

Clare’s techniques grew, using tufting in her work to create carpets and other detail, PVA’d tissue paper to create roads, zig-zagged over; plant dyes began to play a part too.

Clare then moved on to Glasgow to work on  community project as part of the Keeping Glasgow in stitches (http://www.malcolmlochhead.com/kgs.htm for  further info)

–        her project “Map of the World”.

Clare continues to document everyday life, but has moved back to her bold colour palettes, giving her characters bright pink or blue hair for example, and following a pitch to a card company has found her niche in anonymous “everywoman” witty and humorous nudes.

 

Similarly Van Eyck’s Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife 1434,

2006 Centennial Celebrations

Centennial Celebrations

Thursday May 4^th had been 12 months in the planning. It grew from an idea that Barbara had.

Over the months that followed small groups were formed, each beavering away organising their own parts of the event. We had meetings in between to check progress and ideas.

Everyone worked with amazing speed on the day and in 2 hours we went from an empty hall to sales tables, textile exhibitions, members work and demonstrations, needlework collections, costumes, fabulous postcard art, delicious scones and tea, even back ground music courtesy of “The Undecided”. Our Spire picture looked really good. Toni did an excellent job of assembling it. The young embroiderers “Cloak of Visibility” was hugely popular as it was paraded around the visitors.

 Barbara had said to me the week before that she was worried about the number of people that would visit!! When the doors opened, she must have been delighted – there was a queue waiting to come in!!

The Dowager Duchess opened our festivities and as always she was immensely popular. She stayed over her allotted time, being interested in all the displays and asking many questions. The Duchess also enjoyed a cup of tea and scones along with everyone else.

Our other special guests, the Mayor of Chesterfield and his wife, Chris Berry Chairman of the Guild were also made very welcome.

Embroideries were presented to the Dowager Duchess and Chris Berry. The Mayor received a beautiful arrangement of flowers. Chris went on to cut our special “Making Visible” cake, which, by the way, was delicious!

The whole afternoon was buzzing, and was an excellent opportunity for Guild members to have a chat- we don’t often get the time to do that!

2005-2007 Ashgate Hospice Presentation

 Jenny Scott, with Kathy Hollier of Ashgate Hospice, along with Penny Soames, Sandra Goddard, and Joan Holmes Thursday 8^th November 2007. Presenting our banner depicting Chesterfield's Crooked Spire which we began in December 2005. The Banner was made in sections by members of the Guild. A design was drafted out from paper onto calico then cut into approx 36 squares. Members chose a square to take home and work to a given design - a' la Rolf Harris! The banner now hangs in a ward at the Hospice. Where does the time go?