11 July 2012: Summer Social

As usual, our July meeting was a social event. This year we invited members to make a "Magic Wallet" for the member’s competition. These competitions are light hearted and fun and it was clear that those who entered had fun making their entry.

Only days before the Olympic torch had passed through Oxfordshire. Karen Rowe had organised an Olympic Breakfast event to celebrate its journey through Abingdon and had been loaded a genuine torch for the occasion. We were delighted that Karen brought the torch with her to the summer meeting.

Karen with an Olympic torch

9 June 2012: Jo Mabbutt – “Mixed Media in Textiles”

The workshop with Jo Mabbutt was very well attended. It was a fast paced day in which we explored various methods of applying metallic foil and real metals to different surfaces.
The first thing we did was colour small pieces of bond-a-web with water soluble paints. While they were drying we prepared a variety of materials – textiles, plastics, Lutrador and Tyvex – with adhesive and size and set them aside so they could also dry. When the coloured bond-web samples were dry we ironed them onto a separate piece of fabric and applied metallic foil over the coloured surface. The foil adhered to the bond-a-web so there was no need for additional glue or size. We then applied the gold foil to the fabric painted with adhesive and over laid some of those samples with reserved pieces of bond-a-web.

Jo Mabbutt

After lunch we got to use the real metal foils. These were applied to the materials we had prepared with size.

Jo Mabbutt

While most people thought that they would experiment further with the techniques we were shown and some hoped to use it within their own work, a few were put off by the 'messiness' of the adhesives. However, I think everyone enjoyed the day and felt they had learnt something. We certainly all enjoyed looking at the Jo’s gilded lace jewellery and cards during lunch.

Jo Mabbutt

11 April 2012: Lindsay Taylor - "My Embroidered Garden"

In April we welcomed another enthusiastic speaker to the Branch meeting. Lindsay Taylor’s studio is located at the edge of a forest on the Isle of White. It is here, among the native plants and flora that inhabit Britain’s woodland and rural landscapes that Lindsay finds inspiration. Working predominantly in three dimensions, weaving and winding hand-dyed natural fabrics into organic forms Lindsay transforms a common weed into a beautiful handbag or a fabulous shoe, or a familiar flower into a teacup.

Lindsay Taylor
Bindweed shoe
Photo: © 2009 Julie Yeo

Lindsay uses a variety of techniques including freehand machine embroidery, traditional hand embroidery, painting, dyeing, quilting, moulding, felting, sculpting, beading, trapunto, wiring and appliqué.

Lindsay Taylor
Instillation based on a 17th Century painting housed at the Wallace Collection.
"Flowers On A Fountain With A Peacock" by Jan Weenix.

Lindsay’s talk was delivered with the same sense of humour that is evident in her art and was illustrated by stunning photographs and some examples of her work.

14 March 2012: John Gillow - "Indian Textiles"

John Gillow was the invited speaker at the March meeting of the Oxford branch of the Embroiderers Guild. John is a world renowned expert in textiles from around the world, and has authored many books on the subject – in particular African, Indian, and Indonesian textiles. He began buying and collecting back in the late 1960s – a time of transition between the traditional and the modern world. Having set off as a 17 year old hitch-hiker, buying a few Turkish textiles as presents for his family was the start of a life-long passion.


John is one of the best textile enthusiasts and he provided an unmissable talk focusing on Indian Textiles. The tables were covered in a riotous display of fabrics and embroideries from his collection and we were able to see them close up, including many unusual pieces, as they were passed around while John shared his experiences!

8 February 2012: Sarah Welsby - "Paper, Cloth, Stitch"

The night of our February meeting was another bitterly cold one so it was delightful that so many members attended – including 4 new members. Perhaps some of them knew what a treat we had in store that evening but I had not heard of Sarah Welsby, nor seen any of her quilts prior to the meeting.

Sarah Welsby
'cityscape'
paper lamination, hand dyed cottons, machine and hand stitch, inks.
(22” x 16”)

Sarah has developed a technique that involves laminating small pieces of paper to silk organza. Each piece is carefully selected from newspaper print for its colour. Once Sarah has built up her picture on the new fabric, texture is added. First the piece is machine quilted, changing the thread colour sometime every few stitches so that it matches the laminate. The piece is then further embellished by cutting back with a soldering iron and/or the addition of hand embroidery.

Sarah Welsby
'ozone'
paper lamination, textile inks, machine and hand stitch, inks.
(24” x 24”)

11 January 2012: Jo Mabbutt - "Gilded Glories"

Jo Mabbutt began her talk with a history of gilding from Tutankhamen’s death mask, through 16th century Italian risottos, palatial gilded interiors and exteriors, and Gustav Klimt’s erotic 'Golden Period' paintings to Richard Wright, the latest Turner Prize winner and 21st century designer food and alcohol.

Jo Mabbutt

Jo describes herself as "a decorative artist specialising in experimental surface decoration, combining gilding with print and hand painting". She works on a variety of surfaces, from paper to textiles to glass, and is currently developing ranges of gilded jewellery, fashion and interior accessories.

Jo Mabbutt

Lace is Jo’s inspiration and main material; she says "using antique and vintage lace to refashion into precious pieces appeals to me. Intuitive exploration with materials has resulted in contemporary surface treatments, which give my pieces a new fragility with jewel-like qualities".

Jo Mabbutt

14 December 2011 - Christmas Social

The day of our December meeting was really inclement with blustery winds and wintery showers. Given the awful weather and the fact that we don’t have a speaker in December is was delightful to see such a splendid turn out for our Winter Social Evening. When I say splendid I refer not only to the number of members who braved the elements but also to their ‘party cloths’.

After the business part of the meeting and the raffle (thanks to everyone who donated prizes) we enjoyed a bring-and-share super and a glass or two of mulled non-wine and spiced fruit juice. We then exercised our brains with a light hearted, two part quiz. The first part was a set of dingbats to be solved, the second a list of Christmas songs and carols to be identified from the initial letters of the titles. Easier said than done and judging by the groans when the answers were read out, we all thought that we should have identified a few more than we had. However, the winning table had done extremely well and won by a short mile.

The highlight of the evening was our 22 additional guests – the fairies made for the competition. We were given a sheet of basic instructions for ‘Disco Donna’ and asked to make a fairy version. The entries were very different and all wonderful.









The winner was chosen by a coin vote.


Congratulations to Karen Rowe who not only won the competition but also first prize in the Raffle.

9 November 2011, Ali Brown, "Needlefelt without the Teddy Bears"

I had no idea what to expect at last week’s meeting. I’m not a huge fan of felt, never enjoyed making it myself. However Ali was a great speaker! Despite a few technical problems she had lots to tell us and lots of lovely stuff to look at. She has an art background and is one of those artists who is not afraid to try new things. She also has a great website – www.heartfeltart.co.uk – do look at it and see!

Ali Brown
Cockerel

I am a great fan of chickens and found that this is a popular subject with many of us. Ali had some lovely needle felted chickens. They were incredibly simple but strong shapes and she uses as a background beautiful thick pieces of handmade felt, made from merino wool. Not content with lovely felted pieces she also had some hangings, with kantha type stitching on them.

Ali Brown
Colourful Cockerel

Sadly we weren’t able to see her sketchbooks; these were on the slideshow that we were only able to see later in small groups around the laptop. She is a big advocate of sketchbooks and as I am currently doing a sketchbook course I would have loved to have seen them and turned their pages.

A lovely speaker, lots to share with us, full of enthusiasm. And how does she stay so thin??

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We are always pleased to welcome visitors to our branch meetings. This month we were delighted to receive 9 visitors, including one from France and two Hamburg in South Africa. Bandlakazi and Novuyane and Jacky are all involved with the Keiskamma Trust and were in Oxford visiting one of our members. They hope to return to the UK next year, when we would be please for them to join us again. In the mean time, we hope that our other visitors will join us again a little sooner and a little more frequently than once a year.

14 September 2011, Cynth Weyman, "Retire to Wear Purple – No Chance!"

Cynth Weyman’s background came from fine art, and the images she showed us of her drawings and prints certainly demonstrated her artistic skills. She finds inspiration in natural forms such as plants, rocks, seascapes and human figures and will often use the rocky coastal paths of Pembrokeshire as a starting point for a piece of work.

Cynth started by describing her most recent (and exciting although stressful) piece of work. This was to design a logo for a banner to be used as part of the Welsh Tourist Board’s current campaign aimed at encouraging more tourists to Wales. A large, colourful piece, it will be widely seen on social network sites such as Facebook and as part of the TV advert campaign.

I think some of the audience were a little confused by how this fitted into textiles but Cynth got round this by using it as a way of describing the technique she has developed and called "Intaglio Stratti". This is based on the technique of stitching layers of fabrics together and then cutting back top layers to reveal others underneath. Cynth has made this technique her own by using up to 14 layers of fabrics, many of them vibrantly coloured and textured Indian silks, and cutting back in very small areas to create very detailed pictures. These are further enhanced by simple hand stitching.

The first pieces she showed us (on slides) did look a little dated, but that was understandable when you realised they were originally done in the 1970s. Cynth believes in allowing the viewer to read their own story in her work, although many of the pieces are built up from themes in her own personal life. Her work has obviously developed in complexity, from early pieces of mushrooms and plant life, she has moved onto female forms seen within cliffs and Salvador Dali-type mirror images combined with human hands. Cynth told us that she restricts her colour palette and only has 3 boxes of fabrics under the bed – when you see the range of tones of colour in her work this is hard to comprehend!

Cynth Weyman
Reality & Desire

It was difficult to appreciate from the pictures that many of the pieces are designed as panels or art quilts to be hung on walls (think large pieces over 3ft tall) and often there are a number of them forming a series. However, as she had also bought some pieces for us to actually see, you could start to appreciate the amount of work needed to create each picture. She also bought a large collection of cards and prints for sale and emphasised the importance of taking a good picture to start with and knowing how to enhance this on the computer.

Cynth Weyman
Coming Down Going Up

It was perhaps a shame there were not more quilters in the audience as this technique may have appealed more to them as there was not a lot of stitching to appeal to embroiderers.