Alysn Midgelow-Marsden Workshop

*Reminder*Alysn Midgelow-Marsden Workshop Saturday 31st March 2012, 10.00am – 4.00pm
Calow Community Centre
Allpits Road
Calow
Chesterfield
S44 5AT
There is a phone number at the hall – 01246 201366
Carole Hodges will not be attending - Penny Marsden will be there on the day 07892854979
Remember to take a packed lunch!

ECO Centre Information and courses

For those few of you who make it here to see what is happening in the guild you might be interested to know thateach post I write gets only a few views - i.e. people looking at it - but the item entitled 'fish and chip babies' with the knitting pattern had 140 page views! So I need some snappy and contemporary titles to get people looking! - Answers/ideas on a postcard please...

Anne Menary is running a 5 week course starting in April at the Ecco Centre

Details here:

Hand Stitch & printing using recycled materials Thursday afternoons for 5 weeks, starting Thursday 19^th April at the Ecco Centre

Course includes

Stitching and layering on a variety of fabrics

Layering and applique techniques

Creating textured surfaces

Mark making with hand embroidery stitches

Students will be encouraged to develop their own skills and knowledge and follow their own interests to create individual, personal and expressive art work

Course fees - Band A - £48.00, Band B - £42.00, Band C - £19.00

Further details contact the Ecco Centre 01629 533038

A Wool and Craft Fair is taking place at the Eco Centre Wirksworth on the weekend of 14^th and 15^th April 2012 11am to 4pm; an exciting, interesting weekend with lots of activities for all the family, art works, foods or textiles from locally sourced materials.Hand spinners, feltmaking and lost of other related activities. The Babbling Vagabonds will be enacting the Derby Ram using props made in association with pupils form Anthony Gell School

Barbara, in her role as chair was asked to put a few words together to go along with our Moldove postcards:

If anyone has any photos of these I would appreciate them so they can be added in here

Sporting Postcards

Chesterfield Branch

After what I thought was a slow and shaky start the Chesterfield Branch members turned up trumps. Initially I thought we might struggle to produce even 9 postcards however I underestimated our members and in the end we produced 18, 2 strips of 9.

We have Branch members with a variety of embroidery styles, skills in design and favourite stitch techniques.

The process was started by encouraging members to research MOLDOVA ---- yes most said “Where is it” but via the internet and library services we quickly learnt lots of interesting facts about the country both in its previous Soviet days and post-independence. Facts including geography, architecture, demography, economy and sporting successes.

We had a great evening with Anne Menary, a textile artist well known for, amongst other works, her fabric postcards. Anne’s knowledge and enthusiasm fired the imagination of our members and 17 of us began stitching and comparing notes at branch meetings.

The designs represent, mainly, landscape and architecture but with postage stamps, maps and sportsmen as well. Putting these pieces together was an interesting experience, trying to give the strips some sense of balance.

I am proud of all our branch members and it would be invidious to single out, for mention, any particular individual postcards as they all represent a shared effort to produce a  great textile homage to a country and its people.

Barbara Meeke,

 Chairman, Chesterfield Branch

Launch of new East Midlands Region Website

Welcome to the new East Midlands Region Website click to view.

Sunday 18th March at the Regions meeting with Terry Murphy in Ruddington, saw the launch of the all new East Midlands Region Website. Chesterfield, as with every other branch in the region, has its own page, which also links directly to the blog.

Erica Thomson from West Bridgford Guild has put alot of work into getting this new site running, following a request from the Region. Erica succesfully creaed West Bridgford Guilds own website initially and over the coming months I hope we can learn from her to improve what we have. Good, easily accesible information about the guild is the best way we have of geting new members.

If you have any comments to make about the new site, or this one, or information you would like to see you can add comments here or on the 'contact us' page of the new web site.

Young Embroiderers

Her is a photo of the piece displayed at Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show last year made by our Chesterfield Young Embroiderers group