We enjoyed a fun, well led and well organised activity session. Rowan introduced cold water dying and Jayne colour from flowers, the latter held in the foyer as it is a noisy process involving hammers. Both allowed everyone to complete each process and take home finished articles.

Pictured below is Rowan’s workshop showing it being prepared and in progress and some finished items. What we produced can be used as the basis of stitching in our own time.

Pictures from Jaynes work shop are shown below, again they can be used as the basis for future projects. Both workshops allowed us to have fun learn something new and chat and enjoy each others company.

We also held our usual raffle, the colour was orange this time and the two beautifully stitched bags are shown below, both so effective. The large bag was completed by Meriel the smaller bag by Clare. Next months raffle is yellow.

The next meeting will feature a talk from Bernice Hopper entitled Pathways and Towpaths. Bernice is then leading a workshop on 31st May 2025, making multimedia tiles. The next workshop is before then on 29th March 2025, making Japanese draw string bags led by Marion Plumb. We were reminded to complete our book spines celebrating our favourite books. Some examples are shown below.

Members were welcomed back with very enjoyable presentations from two of our members Janette and Rowan. What a great start to the New Year, both were interesting and inspiring and we got to see much of their work. A real treat.

Janette began by telling us that her major inspiration for her stitching is other people. She has been particularly supported and inspired by BETA members and events. Growing up she had stitch inspirations from her family, her grandmother who was a very skilled knitter and her mother a dressmaker who took up embroidery when she retired and from her sister an accomplished quilter. She sometimes felt she didn’t match up, although she did hold on to her first piece of stitching of a dog pictured below. Janette continued to do occasional stitching and was then introduced to BETA at a sit and stitch session at the library. She was encouraged by Anne Haigh to come to BETA meetings and was also encouraged over time by Margaret Richard’s with her inspiring mantra “yes you can”. She cited other inspirational members including Angelas black work, Meriel’s landscapes and Betty Rourke. She has also participated in Travelling books and her latest contribution is shown below

Janette has continued to enjoy cross stitch and a love of pattern and enjoyed a shashiko workshop and Anne’s cross stitching workshop. She also enjoyed a workshop with Betty using a soldiering iron on felt to make bark pictures. Also pictured below are the tags she completed inspired by Anne Brooks. She has been inspired by online work including on U Tube – Roxy sisters and Corinne. Like several BETA members she has attended Little Health Barn where she made the lovely Angel shown below she completed ecodyeing at our most recent West hope weekend.

Rowan also had inspirations in her family, including a great grandmother whose house she grew up in. From an early age Rowan was cutting out hexagons for her grandmother, paper templates at first then graduating onto the fabric itself. As Rowan grew up she moved more towards painting but she did also made her own clothes, discovering that embellishments could hide errors! She had some textile art input in the sixth form. Later she did some beading, but mostly domestic stitching. A period of ill health led to her stitching in earnest resulting in wonderful work for example the multicoloured fish shown below. She developed advanced skills in thread painting and won one of our competitions with her pansy piece winning. Rowan also hand embellished her wedding dress which she later converted to a tunic.

Rowan is influenced by pagan practice and the mother goddess and showed us beautiful examples of her interpretations of this as pictured below. In common with Janette she also cited inspiration and support from BETA, including a recent wet felting workshop. She used her felted piece to make a base for a stitching, inspired by African tribal art. Rowan mentioned particular inspiration from Margaret Richards for this piece but more generally extended this to all the BETA members. BETA members are of course also inspired by both of tonight’s speakers and the work they shared with us.

We had our usual raffle this evening for beautiful stitched bags made this month by Bev (the big bag) and Brenda the small bag

Dee also introduced our group based piece which will be based on our favourite books with each of us making a stitched book spine, to be displayed on a stitched book shelf. Further instructions will be sent out very soon including dimensions for the each spine. The completed piece with all of our contributions should look amazing. Our meeting is being held on zoom, with a speaker from the William Morris Society, talking about May Morris. A Zoom meeting means we don’t have to go out in the worst of the weather and allows to have a speaker we couldn’t otherwise access because of distance or cost.

Our next face to face meeting is on 10th March, with member led activities: cold water dyeing led by Rowan and colour from flower petals, led by Jane. More chance for us all to be inspired by others. The raffle colour is orange.

What a wonderful festive evening. We enjoyed delicious savoury snack and treats before settling down to a talk from Marion Plumb which introduced us to the history and world of the Geisha which is complex and fascinating. They have been described as living works of art and Marion’s presentation brought that to life, including the beautiful and very valuable robes they wear. She also provided a reading list for those who wanted to know more including a Japanese Classic The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, written 1,000 years ago and a book Marion described as authoritative about the current lifestyle and history of the Geisha written Geisha by Liza Dolby.

Marion is also running a workshop for BETA ‘Little Japanese drawstring bags’ next year on 29th March 2025 and brought examples of what we might produce at the workshop which you can see below.

We also enjoyed an exhibition of member’s work during the evening that had been inspired or supported by our much missed member Margaret Richards. Members generously donated an impressive number of gift bags for Anawim which we have been doing each Christmas for several years in a tradition led by Margaret. The bags have been delivered and were gratefully received by the lovely staff at the project who also have very happy memories of Margaret.

This months Gold raffle bags are suitably festive and beautiful and were made by Hel and Janet.

Our next meeting on 13th January 2025 is a Tale of Two Members with Rowan and Janette who will share their work and stitching journey. The raffle colour is red please bring a contribution if you can. Hope all of our members have a good Christmas and New Year break.

We enjoyed a relaxing and productive workshop with Penny of pennyjanedesigns.co.uk. Penny was knowledgeable and really helpful and everyone who attended was able to complete a wet felted piece, to take away and potentially embellish at home. Penny also teaches at The MAC and further information can be found on her website. Blow are a couple of works in progress more images will be on our instagram account in due course.

Our Christmas Party is on Monday 9th December with Marion Plumb talking about the Geisha. A reminder to bring a gift bag with toiletries for Anawim if you are able to and a contribution to our mini exhibition, on the night, of pieces inspired by Margaret Richards.

We really enjoyed welcoming Debbie back for a visit and for her presentation about turning pictures into textiles. Debbie has always enjoyed sketching and using sketch books and was enthused by a facebook challenge, some time ago, to do a sketch every day in May. She also became involved in a local urban stitching group, which was fascinating to hear about, as this was new to most of the audience. Debbie found that she was supported by seeing other members work and by their friendliness and what she described as the staggering quality of their work. She stitched with the group in The Birmingham urban environment but also in other cities in the UK.

Debbie was already a stitcher when she joined this group and began to combine her two loves. She printed sketches onto fabric and used quilting and other stitch embellishments to transform them. A knowledge base was relevant to both methods, with colour theory being particularly useful. One of the differences if stitching rather than sketching, is the time committed to the piece, which makes thinking about composition so important. Debbie has also completed workshops at the Midland Art Centre including textile printing and mono printing which have informed her work. She recommends using Inktense pencils that are softer and stronger than water colours and that once they are used with water are fixed. Debbie’s also mentioned the influence of Lynne Chapman, a children’s book illustrator, now doing 3D textile work.

The work below features pieces by Debbie inspired by the urban environment. The piece with a woman’s head was based on the Tenant of Wildfell Hall and another piece by Staffordshire Pottery. there is also a glimpse of a lovely concertina book of sketches.

Debbie sketches all the time and takes a miniature bottle of water with her. If using fabric she will prepare this at home. Some of her sketches take 10 minutes to complete others longer for example the robin pictured above. Paper sketches can be stabilised with bondaweb in order to stitch.

We also had our raffle, silver this month, with lovely bags that are shown below made by Ruth and Roman. Apologies for a recent blog where beautiful bags were misattributed they were in fact completed by Sian and Deborah. The December raffle colour is Gold, please bring contributions. The next meeting on 9th November is our Christmas Party, with savoury snacks and sweet treats make by the committee. There will be no sales table this month. Marion Plumb a BETA member is giving us a talk about Geisha. Marion is both knowledgeable and entertaining this is highly recommended. There is no competition but Members are asked to bring items that have been inspired in some way by Margaret Richards.

Finally as Meriel reminded us in an email, we are making gift bags for Anawim a women’s charity very dear to Margaret’s heart. Details are on a recent email from Meriel but a bag of some sort no larger than A4, containing mainly toiletries, would be brilliant if you are able to contribute.

Tonight we had planned an evening of three activities for all to experience. Sadly one of the planned sessions was cancelled because of the illness of the session leader who we hope can lead a session at a future meeting instead. We went ahead with the two remaining activities Swedish Needle Weaving led by Brenda and a Christmas decoration led by Meriel. The photographs show a sample of of each and two examples of work in progress. The Christmas decoration is an adaptation of the Dorset Button. Everyone enjoyed taking part and having a chance to chat.

We also exchanged travelling books this evening as we have started a new round. Margaret whose death and contribution to BETA, and others was featured in the last blog, left us her remaining stash and a few completed items All could be purchased on the Sales Table. There is too much sadly for us to store between meetings. We have donated some to the Scrap Store to support early years play. They were delighted to receive it. Remaining parts of the stash will be for sale on future Sales Tables. Money raised tonight will go to support the charity Margaret was very involved with Anawim.

The raffle featured bags very effective black and white bags from Diane and Gill and are shown below, as is a bag made by Dee which was won last month but omitted from the last blog.

Our next meeting on 11th November 2024 will feature a former committee member, Debbie Eyre, who will talk about From Sketch to First Stitch which should be informative and inspiring as we see her work and draw on her knowledge and experience. The raffle colour for November is silver please bring items to include

Margaret Richards died recently after a short illness and at home with her family. She had been a long-standing BETA member, joining when we were a branch of the Embroiderer’s Guild. This post hopes to share a little of how much she meant to BETA as a whole and to individual members. We also wanted to celebrate her life by including images of some of the exhibition of her work, which was held following her funeral.

Margaret was a longstanding member of BETA’s committee, organising our periodic workshops and providing wonderful lunches for visiting tutors. Her contribution to BETA and its members went far beyond her significant help on the committee however. She was a power house of energy and enthusiasm, helping with events, planning exhibitions and providing learning and support for BETA members who were less knowledgeable and skilled than her. She held mini workshops, including one spent dyeing fabrics in her garden and another making felt bowls. She was also kind and supportive to individual BETA members, always willing to spend time helping individual members develop their skills, or solve textile related conundrums.

Margaret contributed to the community beyond her work with BETA. She led a U3A group and very significantly was a longstanding volunteer at ANAWIM women’s centre. Their most recent newsletter, following their AGM includes a tribute to Margaret. It features some pictures from an exhibition of the work women at the centre had produced, as members of her textile group. Margaret was rightly very proud of the work she did with the centre and spoke with pride and affection about individual women she had worked with. Margaret was also very good fun to be around and memorably up for fancy dress, as shown below, from a BETA meeting that focused on Mary Quant.

Following her funeral everyone gathered together and we were helped to remember her by a display of photographs and by seeing some of her work displayed on the day. This included work completed by Margaret as a member of Birmingham Weavers. That group was central in organising the day and the exhibition itself.

Many of us were then privileged by taking a piece of her work with us to treasure and to donate to ANAWIM among other charities. Those of us who were lucky enough to know Margaret will value those pieces. She will however live on beyond the physical reminders, held in our own inspiring memories of spending time with her.

Our first session of the new BETA year began with a minutes silence, in loving memory of our member Margaret Richards who has recently died. A separate blog about Margaret will be forthcoming, suffice to say for now, that she will be very much missed. She would have loved this evenings presentation it is so sad that she could not be with us.

Tonight’s speaker, Ann, was engaging, endlessly fascinating and amusing (see the Reese Mog inspired cushion below). Ann describes herself as an artist who happens to work in textiles and is inspired by political issues and women’s experiences, now and through history. Prompted by finding herself with an empty nest, she began her formal education in textiles with city and guilds she also studied at Westhope, one of our groups favourite places for stitching. One of her first pieces of work was the pincushion also pictured below which was inspired by the aging body. Another early piece was influenced by the fascinating and powerful medieval queen Eleanor of Acquitaine. This piece was oil paint on cloth and includes a figure of a unicorn. Anne uses a lot of variety in the techniques she employs including machine stitching, layering fabric and burning back with a heat gun.

Other inspirations came from Jane Austens novel Persuasion, set in Lyme Regis. Ann was also inspired by Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace, who was educated by her mother and who developed the mathematics underpinning Babbages plan for a first computer, which sadly did not get completed until centuries later.

Ann lives in the midlands and a particularly fascinating and locally inspired part of her presentation had a local focus. This was not on the relatively privileged women famous in the suffragette movement, but on ordinary working class women’s part in the struggle. Their contribution, Ann pointed out, is significantly under represented. Some women were locked up in Stafford Prison and subjected to force feeding. One of the first suffragettes to be force fed was held in another local prison Winston Green. She was a working class woman from the area. The piece featuring the daisy shown below draws on this quote ‘I am within these walls but where is the man’. A bag for hunger strikers shown below features women’s heads, with high collars to hide the marks from their ordeal. Another piece about the struggle for the vote uses androgynous drawings and challenges unfairness that women’s rights had to be conferred by men. More whimsically the Easter egg, also shown below, was made for a friend from Scotland. It celebrates the haggis and the story that they were grown in cellars, fed by the droppings from whisky distilling.

Ann gives the fee she receives for talks to the Haven project which works with refugee women and children. This post does not begin to do justice to the range of Ann’s work her breadth of knowledge and the insights and humour she provided. If anyone gets a chance to hear her speak elsewhere, she comes highly recommended.

At the meeting we also held our raffle, with bags completed by Diane, both were beautiful but sadly not photographed on the night. Apologies to them both.

Our meeting next month on Monday 14th October at 7.30 will be modelled on a previously successful evening, with a carousel of different stitch activities. Materials will be provided, but please bring a basic sewing kit. The travelling books will restart fully at that meeting so please bring your book, with your completed contribution and be ready to receive a book in return to take home with you and add a piece. The raffle colour is black and white and as always textile related contributions are very welcome.

We held our AGM before the party festivities and said thank you to Anne, who is standing down as chair. She was thanked for her truly impressive contribution to BETA and role in helping us establish the group. Meriel is taking over as chair and Ruth stepping up to be secretary, thanks were given to both of them and to Dee who is joining the committee. We also collected feedback about last years sessions, to guide our future programme.

We enjoyed the plentiful treats supplied by the committee, before an interesting presentation from Ruth about Hardanger a form of open work which comes from Norway, usually completed in white perle, so included as a form of white work, although colour can be used. Ruth explained that the cutting of the stitched fabric which is then over woven is the most challenging part of the process and recommended hardanger scissors as helpful. The work is best completed on linen even weave, or specialist hardanger fabric. She showed us some lovely samples and offered to run a mini workshop in the New Year if members are interested.

We also held our competition BETA in bloom. Entries are shown below. The winner was Rowan with a very skilled piece of realistic stitching of pansies. The photo below does not do justice to the piece which was truly amazing. The entries as a whole were varied, beautiful and showed off a range of skills and ideas. The new format for the competition devised by Ruth and Liz was praised by all. We look forward to the winter competition subject to be chosen by Rowan.

The raffle colour was pink and the two bags completed by Kay and Diane are shown below.

Our next meeting is on 9th September 2024. Ann Patterson is speaking about Ordinary and Extraordinary Women, stories told through textiles, which sounds fascinating and a great welcome back after the Summer break. The raffle colour is purple.

A very successful day with one of our favourite tutors. Angie explained how to transfer pictures and text onto fabric, including by using Gelli Plates, laser jet printing with transfer inks and iron on transfers. All the participants had a stimulating and enjoyable day experimenting and spending time with each other. See the images below for a small fraction of the work done.

Our workshops are relaxing and friendly and very good value and can be booked with Margaret at the meetings.