A great start to the New year: A tale of 2 members

The first meeting in January is one of the favorites in our yearly calendar when we share the work and experiences of two of our members. On this occasion Anne and Ruth each talked about their personal history with embroidery. They shared some beautiful pieces of work, just a few of which are pictured below. As always they don’t do justice to the quality and range of work we saw.

Anne our current chair and longstanding member, talked about her memories of her grandmother and about a photograph that was taken of them together when Anne was a child. This inspired a detailed piece of stump work embroidery pictured below. She also shared her work across an impressive range of skills, which also covered canvas work and Japanese embroidery. We saw some of her work in progress, as she is currently using circuit boards as an inspiration for her stitching. Anne told us about the influence of others on her work including Anne Brooke and Angie Hughes. The latter is running our March workshop which is sure to be great fun and very informative.

Ruth is a more recent member of our group, although it doesn’t feel like that given her level of engagement and contribution. She shared a moving personal history of the role that stitching has played in supporting her through difficult periods in her life. She also showed us a lovely range of her work included pieces based on soldiers experiences in the trenches. She told us about her developing insight into her own engagement with stitch over the years. While she produces beautiful finished pieces, based on existing patterns, including the black work shown below, she also increasingly enjoys the creative process and has like Anne learnt from Anne Brook. It was a privilege to listen to both contributions.

We also had our monthly raffle, which was red and both beautiful bags are also shown below. Our next meeting will be on Zoom with Maria Wigley, before we return to our usual face to face meetings in March. Anne will send out a zoom link to everyone in time for that meeting. As a result of being on Zoom we will not exchange traveling books again, until the March meeting. There will be no raffle so we will alter the schedule with the planned February orange bags being used at the March meeting. We hope all our members enjoy the Zoom meeting if you have any difficulties technically do tell someone from the committee.