Cveg enews 07 (march 2015)

Cherwell Valley branch of the Embroiderers’ Guild

MARCH 2015

Stitching Matters …….!

Online newsletter of the Cherwell Valley branch of the Embroiderers’ Guild!

Issue number seven - March 2015!

Welcome to our latest online newsletter, intended to bring you up to date with our latest activities. Our cafe-style meetings are proving popular, and allow us to view members’ work more easily.

A reminder of forthcoming dates: This Thursday (March 19th) ‘Small Stories’ with Caroline Kirton (extra help to set up will be quite a few of will have been day., and may traffic.)

appreciated as the Committee at the NEC all be delayed by

At Our Last Meeting (February 19th, 2015): ‘Manipulation’ was the key theme of February’s meeting, as members found out all sorts of things our laptops, tablets and phones did that we never knew they could!!

Branch member Ann Somerset Miles taught us to reevaluate not only what we take photos of, but how we take them – how changes in angle, focus and close-up can reveal totally different aspects of the same thing, be it a tree or anything else we come across in daily life.!

Thursday 16th April: Ruth Smith, ‘The Story of Folded Secrets’.

St Mary’s House, Broughton, Banbury, OX15 5DT. 7.30pm.

Visitors are always welcome.

Places are still available for our next WORKSHOP on Sat March 28th with member Judith Gussin who will i n t ro d u c e u s t o ‘ E t h n i c Embroidery as a Design Source’. (To book, contact Carolyn Walker, 01608 685842.)

Un d e r A n n’s g u i d a n c e , a n d w i t h t h e h e l p o f G i l l (Manthorpe), her husband Paul and daughter Emma, we experimented with cropping, resizing, and re-proportioning our digital images – after the all-important advice to work only with a copy of the image, never the original. Ann took us step by step through the photo collage program she uses, Ann Somerset Miles (Editor)

annsomersetmiles@me.com

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Cherwell Valley branch of the Embroiderers’ Guild

The Wider Picture: Your Committee has been hard at work discussing the importance of bringing our Branch to a wider audience. MARKETING and PUBLICITY is vital if we are to attract more members, for a viable future, whilst appealing to younger stitchers, too!

MARCH 2015

showing how to add the images, and change lines, backgrounds and layout to achieve the desired effect. We then made a brief foray into adding text using Photoshop, and saw how the images could be printed out onto fine paper which can itself then be physically manipulated ready for stitch work.!

By the end of the meeting, even the most technophobic amongst us had a new appreciation for the potential of digital photo manipulation for stitch!

(Clare Boomer)# An n ’s p a p e r a n d fa b r i c l i n e d ‘Earthly Delights Dream Coat’ created from dozens of photo-collaged images was avail able for members to see what is possible.#

A new poster is available, kindly designed and printed by Clare Boomer.

This will be available in both A4 size, and as an A5 ‘flyer’, for circulation to relevant shops, doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms and local schools.

Mailshots to editors of village newsletters are also in the pipeline, plus approaches to the regional press.

All six of us on the Committee will be sharing the task of this campaign, but we are asking members to become involved as well - by a putting a poster/flyer in suitable ‘local’ locations.

Calling for PHOTGRAPHS: Having discovered that there are so many excellent photographers amongst our members, who all seem to be prepared to share their work and knowledge (remember the happy buzz at the February meeting?) - we plan to SHOWCASE as much of members’ work as possible. To this end, we intend to produce a SLIDE PRESENTATION at the Christmas Meeting on Thursday 10th December 2015. So please take pictures of any of your work that you will be happy to share, and bring them (as JPEGs) to each meeting on a USB stick for our Editor to download. A text explanation would also be helpful.!

(The image below shows some of the lovely work Ann Lowe showed us at the January 2015 meeting. A wonderful inspiration.)#

Ann Somerset Miles (Editor)

annsomersetmiles@me.com

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Cherwell Valley branch of the Embroiderers’ Guild

MARCH 2015

GAINING INSPIRATION: It was obvious from recent meetings how much we learn from each other by sharing ideas and techniques; though there never seems to be sufficient time to do so!!

Time spent on our own, reading, or experimenting with new products, is never wasted, so here are a few pointers that you may like to investigate: !

Keeping in Touch: Fro m s t ro n g ro o t s g ro w healthy plants, and we are fortunate here in Cherwell Valley to be a part of the vibrant and forward-looking ‘SEW REGION’ (the South East and South West). The region champions social media: click this link to take a look at the SEW Facebook page: https:// www.facebook.com/profile.php? id=100008210268065&fref=ts

‘Selvedge THE FABRIC OF YOUR LIFE’ is subtitled “textiles in fashion, fine art, craft, design, interiors, travel and shopping”.

Founded in 2003, Selvedge is a design-led, 100 page, bimonthly magazine that covers every facet of textiles in an intelligent and inspiring way. Published in the London, Selvedge is at the centre of an international community of people who share a passion for cloth and a belief of t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f t h e i r m a te r i a l surroundings. Click http://www.selvedge.org. !

‘Atfully Embroidered’ by Naoko Shimodo, published in 2012 by Interweave, reinvents vintage embroidery designs with a modern twist. It provides clear diagrams and instructs for making 17 unusual Japanese-styled bags, with simple embroidery designs that could be adapted to other items. Available through Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 1454703504/aboolovsjou-21!

Hand-stitching is still just as much in the frame as mixedmedia work, as demonstrated by this entry from the recent Big Stitch Sampler Competition.

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The NATIONAL AGM of the Embroiderers Guild will be held on Saturday 11th April 2015 in the magnificent building (opened i n 2 0 1 3 ) o f t h e L i b ra r y o f Birmingham.

‘Quilting Arts’ magazine, published bi-monthly in the USA is particularly catholic in its approach to quilting. An art form indeed that marries many techniques for creating quilted pieces with both hand and machine stitching.

Available in the UK through Rainbow Silks, this issue is particularly relevant in the ingenious use textile artists have made of hand-stiching (which actually encouraged your editor to get out her silken threads and embroidery needles and forget all about her arthritis!) www.rainbowsilks.co.uk!

Copy for next issue by Thursday 30th April, please.

Ann Somerset Miles (Editor)

annsomersetmiles@me.com

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