We held a very well attended friendly and enjoyable exhibition and hope we inspired others to think about stitching as well as enjoying wonderful cakes and a tombola and cake stall.

The pieces on display included work we had completed as group projects over the years. Most recently the bookcase shown below and featuring the spines of our favourite books that had been stitched by members. The individual contributions werevery skilfully put together as a complete piece by Deed.

We shared some items that were the result of our Workshops which are very varied and held regularly.

Individual members included pieces of their own demonstrating a wide range of beautiful and skilled stitching. We all learn from each other and enjoy sharing our work.

Many pieces are not pictured here but hopefully this gives a flavour of our work.

Hannah gave a detailed and informative introduction to her work and textile journey. As you will see from the images below her work is very colourful and full of texture. Hannah is a younger stitcher who is continuing to develop her work vision and skills. She shared her inspiring and creative portfolio and her enthusiasm was infectious. Her work included a dress made from ties she completed for her GCSE, shown below, which she has worn herself. After school and college Hannah went on to do a mixed media degree at De Montfort university. Hannah uses a digital colour palette and employs collage and stencils as well as some machine embroidery, stressing sustainability and up-cycling fabric faux fur and leather scraps sometimes trapped with netting.

Inspired by the life under the sea, including jelly fish and anemones and by bioluminescence, she produces unexpected pieces, making use of appliqué and reverse appliqué and also using water soluble fabric. Objects like bottle tops and brightly coloured beads are made use of as shown below. Hannah also showed us another, later dress made with a base woven from fabric strips and with embroidered detail. Again it has been worn but apparently wasn’t very comfortable it looked lovely however.

Hannah was a finalist in the 2023 Hand and Lock award. Her entry was the poncho shown below made of repeated panels. When interning with Hand and Lock she also worked on a jacket for Elton John.

Hannah can be found on instagram hg_textile_arts and at HMGLOSSOP@GMail.com.

We also held our usual raffle this evening the colour was blue/turquoise. The large bag was made by Claire the smaller bag by Cas both very effective as you can see.

Our next meeting on 14th July is our summer party and competition the raffle colour is pink. There will be treats on hand from the committee. In the meantime we are looking forward to our exhibition.

We had a very sociable evening making items to sell at our Exhibition Which is happening on 28th June 2025. Among other things we made key rings, name badges, needle books. Pictures below just capture a little flavour of our work on the evening.

We also held the monthly raffle with yellow as this month’s colour. The bags are pictured below: the very vibrant large bag completed by Jayne and the delicate hand stitched bag completed by Hel. Meriel is also hosting a making day at her home on Friday 23rd May 2025, when some members will add to the items that will be on sale, including tote bags and cards. Members will also be hard at work at home completing other projects.

We have a busy time ahead and lots of members have already signed up to help at various points. Some of us will also meet on 31st May for a workshop. The next meeting will be on Monday 9th June, 2025 a talk from Hannah Glossop entitled Luminous Depths which sounds very intriguing. The raffle bag colour is Blue/Turquoise please bring contributions and don’t forget for members there is a lot more information about what is ahead and what part you can play on the notices sent out by Meriel.

We had the pleasure of hearing Bernice talk about her work and inspirations. She likes to use neutral and pastel colour palettes and for that pallet to be limited. Bernice has developed themes for her practice over several years and as a local artist has been inspired among other things by walks along the canal network. She has collected hundreds of photographs of canals and aqueducts. She has also developed work based on maps, this work was inspired by workshops at Little Heath Barn, a wonderful local resource that many of us have benefited from. Breakdown printing is often used in her work and she also cuts up pieces and recombines them as shown below.

Bernice uses workbooks to record her work and the work books and the work itself feed off each other. She makes fabric books and sometimes uses hanging books. She has used painting and procion dye and has a large collection of stencils and has also played with the top layer of serviettes with gel medium over the top. When she had an accident to her hand she also used photographs printed onto fabric when she couldn’t stitch she has also used machine preset stitches.

Bernice is running a workshop for out group Making Fabric Tiles with Venice as the inspiration Thermofax screens will be used as part of the process examples of what we might make are shown below. Given her fascinating talk the workshop should be very rewarding.

We also held our raffle with a large very cute bag from Janet M. And a beautifully stitched bag from Marion H.

We have a busy time ahead with our exhibition and farmers market stall in the summer, and with the book spine project for the exhibition. Our summer competition will be ‘Vintage with a Twist’. Our next meeting on 12th May will be activity based, making things to sell for the exhibition. The raffle bag colour next month is green.

Marion’s workshop was very enjoyable and allowed all of the participants to really engage with the process of making their own bag with some finished pieces and other works in progress at the end. All of us learnt new skills and all had a chance to use their own creativity, with both machine and hand stitching. Marion was a supportive and informative workshop leader. Some work in progress is shown below.

At the end of the workshop we had a show and tell when we all shared our work at the end of the day some of which is shown below.

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.