September 1st Meeting 2011

Beryl Cross will be running a workshop on Thursday 1st September. All materials will be provided but please bring a small sewing kit (needles and scissors) with you.

Anne, our treasurer, has prepared the branch renewal and Gift Aid forms but was still waiting for the Guild forms to arrive at the time of writing - your membership is due for annual renewal please bring your cheque books! 

Joan Holmes, our secretary will be officiating in my absence (Sorry but I will be on a 'Stitchscapes' course with Jean Littlejohn in Shropshire...).
Joan will have some committee nomination forms with her. There actually isn't anyone due to step down from the committee posts this time, and as far as I know everyone is prepared to carry on this year - HOWEVER it is usually the case that there are few if any offers to stand on the committee so if you feel you would like to put yourself forward PLEASE DO! Either  contact me penny.marsden@btinternet.com or speak to Joan on the meeting night.

Carol Bownes and Janet Dimitrasch will finish their term in organising our programme, workshops, speakers etc.and will stand down at the AGM in October. Carole Hodges has worked with them over the last year and will continue as programme secretary this year as her final year.  A small sub-committee exists currently to help with suggestions and organisation of the programme (they only meet approx. three times a year). We will absolutely require someone to take over the Programme Secretary role from next year but as Carole will be working on next year's programme from now it would be helpful if someone was available to work with Carole on this. Obviously it is a good learning opportunity too if you have never done this before.

The main committee only gets together on an ad-hoc basis 7-8 times a year, usually in an evening and usually in Chesterfield.

If you are able to help, or you would like to have a say in how the Guild is run, or the programme that is delivered please get involved.

Felting Workshop - November 12th at Eastwood Hall

Bookings will open for the felt making workshop on Saturday 12th November. This is a fund-raising exercise for our Young Embroiderers Group. The cost will be £25 to include materials and equipment for the day.

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.