Interestingly Jane centred her talk around a number of varied landscapes focusing on what they have meant to her as she moved through them. She started her talk by telling us a little about her background, with a career in museums. In 2007 she became a freelance textile artist and now has a studio in the Artery Studios Worcester WR1 3BD.

Jane noted the importance of memory association and sharing experiences when responding to Landscapes. She referenced a spring flowers walk in May 21 when emerging from lockdown. She produced a large collage which she then cut into pieces which were layered with other fabrics and worked into. She also based pieces completed later that year focusing on the landscape of her own garden. One is pictured below and included her brother’s silk ties. Her works are not literally representational but capture mood and personal response.

In other pieces Jane drew on the landscape of North Norfolk thinking about the edge land between water and solid earth. She has thought about how the landscape has been shaped over time and on how it changes with the seasons. She has also drawn on the pattern of fields in Dorset, using indigo dyed scraps and scrip and lots of fabric scraps. She often stitches from the back with repetitive stitches like running and blanket which leave stitches visible on the front.

Travel diaries are an important part of Jane’s work. She travelled to Antarctica and took a collaged roll that she stitched into as the diary of that journey. She uses machine stitching to hold pieces down, but likes the rhythm of hand stitching. Jane also kept a stitch diary in a trip to the Falklands. This diary was completed on the boat each day and is now preserved in a large padded journal, seen below with some other pieces. Jane’s talk was well illustrated with slides and we were able look closely at all of her work. She was clear and engaging as a speaker and the links she makes with landscape were particularly interesting. You can see her work at a shared exhibition taking place from 19th to 23rd June 2024 in the Worcester studio spaces mentioned above. She can also be found at @jatextileart.

We also held our usual raffle with the addition of two lovely cushions donated by Betty and a large bag made by Marion Plumb and small bag made by Margaret all pictured below.

Our next meeting is the summer party on 8th July 2024, with refreshments and treats provided by the committee. Our brief AGM and the summer competition will also feature, together with a demonstration of hardanger embroidery, by one of our members, Ruth. The raffle colour is pink. We will get back our own travelling book at the meeting and be able to look during the evening at all of the books contributed to from this round. Next years programme will also be available for us to look forward to during our August summer break.

What a great meeting, with a brilliant speaker. Karina graduated from her Textile Design degree at Birmingham City University in 2023. Whilst there she learnt a range of techniques and was helped to move beyond her comfort zone. She was involved in designing patterns for the volunteers at the Commonwealth Games in the city. During the course Karina became increasingly interested in textural work, with hand stitching and beads, central elements. She also developed an interest in sustainability, using background fabrics that are naturally dyed. Karina began to focus on thinking about nature including coral reefs and likes using strong colours in her work. As part of her development she was awarded a placement in a couture company, working on bespoke stitching for bridal gowns where she increased her skill and knowledge.

On graduation Karina won two awards, including the bespoke textile award. Her final exhibition was entitled Roots of Remembrance and drew on the beauty of medicinal plants, particularly those relevant to the treatment of dementia. The first piece below ‘Bacopa’s beauty’ is based on the Bacopa plant which she explained benefits cognitive functioning . Her pieces made use of other skills including gold work. The headdress shown below used a lot of stump work and drew in traditional folklore as well, with the use of snowdrops to relieve pain. This headpiece entitled ‘making the unseen seen’ represented the healing process in the brain. Finally there an image shown of a beautiful piece of stitching using plant structures and relevant chemical symbols.

It is hard to capture how much we enjoyed this talk. To meet a young embroiderer who has such highly developed skills and such fascinating thinking and conceptualisation behind her work was a real privilege. Karina was also a confident, engaging and knowledgeable speaker and her passion for her work was inspiring. We all wish her well and would love to hear in the future about the next steps in her stitch journey.

We also held our yellow raffle with the large bag made by Jayne and the small bag by Bernadette. Our next meeting features Jo Hall a lecturer in textiles and the raffle bag is green, contributions would be appreciated.

Lovely to all be back together again, much as we enjoyed our February zoom. For this meeting, three of our members, Meriel, Brenda and Margaret led three different short sessions, where members could make respectively: small landscapes, mandalas and needle felted pictures. Members circulated around each activity, half an hour for each. The session leaders had worked really hard preparing and were generous with their sharing of information and materials. Everyone learnt something and we had a chance to talk have fun and build relationships in the group. Some of the activity is pictured below.

We also had our orange raffle the lovely bags made by Helen Miller and Bev are again pictured below. We also had the chance to look through a banner of emblems that had been made for a past regional day. Each panel represented a part of the region and some of the banner as a whole is shown, along with the panel representing Birmingham.

One of our members has also reminded us of an exhibition at Lichfield Cathedral consisting made up of 12 huge silk panels, reimagining the creations story. More information at http://www.creation-threads.co.uk and http://www.lichfield-cathedral.org. The exhibition runs from 17th April to 2nd June. An example is pictured below it all looks amazing.

Our next meeting on 8th April 2024 will feature a talk from Karina Jassi a new textile art graduate. Should be really interesting and is a a chance for us to learn from and support new talent. The raffle will be yellow, please bring anything you can spare to include. Don’t forget our summer competition for 8th July is flowers.

A brief post this time as we didn’t meet in person this month, so no photographs are available. We were able to hear in depth from Mandy however, who shared remotely many examples of her work. She told us about her journey into textile art and in particular shared her love of vintage quilts, where she is inspired by the fabrics, but also by the repairs and layers found within them. She described it as fabric archeology. Mandy embellishes a range of items found for example in charity shops and likes simple collages using slip stitches. She sometimes over dyes and embroiders with a range of threads. She shared fabric and concertina books and told us of her latest book Textiles Transformed.

Mandy runs workshops in Northumberland where she is based and she teaches occasionally in France. More information can be found at mandypatullo.co.uk as this summary does not do her justice. Members who attended really enjoyed her presentation.

Our next meeting will be in person at Cotteridge on 11th March and will be a taster night to try out different techniques.More information will be sent out on email nearer the time. The raffle bag colour is orange. Please, bring contributions if you can. Will be good to see everyone in person again.

Great to all be back together again after Christmas. We all enjoyed hearing tonight from two of our members, Kay Fuller and Jayne Hill, talking about their life in stitch and sharing some of their lovely work.

Kay’s presentation was informed by reflecting on why she stitches and the influence of family experiences. Her grandmother was a tailor and her mother a knitter. Kay took up embroidery, concerned that she may not be precise enough for either of these activities. She shared with us a piece completed at school when she was just 10. The work included the figures of two fishermen. Impressive for her age, although several in the audience thought that one of the figures was sporting a turban! She said that there then followed a long gap, until she made a piece for her sister’s 40th. She later made a piece based on the tree of life, using fabric from her sister’s clothes.

Kay did courses at the MAC, including creative embroidery with Jackie Lawson. She painted on silk but wasn’t over impressed by her resulting painting, but then cut it up to make a new successful picture. During a felt making workshop she was influenced by the colours of her mother’s favourite Landscape. A picture of the resulting ‘Neliphant’, again pictured below, was originally a sea scape and as Kay put it an example again of surprising things revealing themselves. A stained glass window from the church her father attended inspired another piece, which she has started working on again, sometimes at our monthly sit and stitch. The final piece that is pictured below, is a political, work inspired by the inequalities she saw when visiting the Bahamas. Kay sees her work as informed by her politics.

It was clear in Jayne’s presentation that she was also influenced by family stitchers. Her mum was a dress maker and her nan a knitter. As a teenager Jane began completing kits which she sometimes amended as she grew in confidence. As her interest in stitching grew, she also learnt from classes and workshops at the MAC and later many organized via this group (previously the Birmingham brand of the Embroidery Guild). She was introduced to free motion machine embroidery and mixed textiles. Jayne now focuses on machine embroidery, including an effective technique using thicker thread in the bobbin but still enjoys some hand stitching and is open minded to new ideas. She likes her pieces to be useful and has made bags, and contributions for our exhibitions and enjoyed working on a project making tactile books for visually impaired children, which she was involved in as part of BETA. Both day workshops and mini workshops have had an influence on her work, including a mini workshop, with one of our longstanding member Betty using felt soldering. When lucky enough to win a raffle bag the contents have inspired other pieces of work.

We held our usual raffle, this evening with two lovely bags completed by Hel and Laura. Maybe the contents will inspire one of our lucky winners. Meriel also talked us through some important notices, reminding us of upcoming workshops and possible mini workshops. Details of the latter will be sent out on email.

Our next meeting on 12th February 2024 is on ZOOM avoiding us going out in potentially bad weather and allowing us to access a really good speaker, who otherwise lives too far away, Mandy Portillo. There is therefore no raffle in February. The March raffle bags will be orange, contents appreciated. We also will not exchange traveling books in February so everyone who participates has two months to complete their next contribution. The March meeting will be activity based, with three tables we can move around, including needle felting, Mandalas and making little pictures. Members will just need to bring a basic sewing kit. Our summer competition is ‘Beta in Bloom’.

We closed 2023 with our Christmas party including a talk from Analiza Jones ‘Handbags from the Phillipines’. Analiza was both entertaining and interesting and some of her bags are pictured below. We also had our Christmas Competition, with many lovely entries. Congratulations to Hel who won the competition and to all the other entries, that were admired and enjoyed by everyone. We feasted on Christmas nibbles, savoury and sweet, provided by the committee. The gold raffle featured two truly beautiful bags, pictured below, and made by Rowan and Ruth.

The next meeting is the always popular Tale of Two Members, with Jayne and Kay, who will share with us their work and journey in stitching. The raffle colour is red please bring items to include if you can.

Happy new year to everyone looking forward to a creative 2024.

Following on from her presentation in October of this year, Ruth’s workshop focused on each of us making one of her beautiful lanterns. In the process we learned more about, and practiced, free machine embroidery, as well as Ruth’s method of painting on fabric. We had a fun sociable and stimulating day and all of use took away some real learning.

Meriel managed to complete her lantern on the day. Ruth helped her in the final stages, so that we could all see the tricks of the trade. The rest of us took a lantern kit to complete at home, with the materials we had produced, and Ruth’s tips for construction in mind. Jayne successfully finished her lantern soon afterwards.

Pictured below you can see some of us hard at work, Ruth’s own display, and Meriel holding up her beautiful completed lantern. Jayne’s completed, equally beautiful lantern is also pictured below.

We are hoping that Ruth might return in the future to run a different workshop after such a positive experience. She can be found at http://www.rooparkinsontextiles .co.uk.

Members are reminded that ‘Eclectica’ who include members of BETA, are exhibiting at Forge Mill Needle Museum. The last day is on Saturday 26th November 2023 when you can also meet the makers. A member also recommended a pop up yarn shop in the Great Western Arcade.

Claire brought along a variety of her work to share with the meeting and talked through her stitching journey and her approach to textiles. Her education included fine art and print making and she also developed an interest in free machine embroidery. She developed her work using painting, but also mixed media with a variety of textiles and objects embroidered with both machine and hand embroidery.

She talked us through a variety of inspirations for her work, including a piece inspired by the suffrage movement ‘sewing seeds of equality no shrinking violets here”. She drew on the hats that were typical of the period with the suffragette and suffragist colours and including old jet and a large sewing needle as a hat pin. A piece pictured below unites her interest in women’s issues, with environmental concerns, and features Professor Wangari Maathai, who started the green belt movement in Kenya.

Continuing the environmental theme Claire has produced work about the impact of palm oil production. The pieces, again shown below, involve a variety of items sewn onto organza stretched in a hoop with layers being built up. She used hand dyed silk chiffon to represent flames, although she generally doesn’t dye her own fabrics. Another piece included here is based on the Malaysian Frog. Sometimes she is also inspired by the fabric itself. She does not have a set style, because she learns from each piece. She has also included some felting and free form crochet.

Claire is now on a path exploring weaving and has dyed wool with lichens and onion skins. This was a fascinating and inspiring talk and Claire encouraged us also to look at her work in detail . She can be found on instagram as @cooperwalsh.

We also had our usual raffle, this time silver. Some of the stitching on the bags completed by Margaret and Jayne is shown below.

Our December meeting on 11th December is the Christmas party with gold raffle bags. Analiza Jones with talk about handbags from the Philipines. Please bring raffle contributions. The committee will provide savoury and sweet treats, so save some room and don’t forget to bring your entries for the competition.

The evening was very well attended and it was especially nice to see so many of our new members. Ruth talked to us about her love of making from a young age and about her attitude towards her work, seeing everything as potentially a work in progress. She recognized the helpfulness for her of having a good grounding in basic skills and then being able to bend the rules. She began her skill development in printing weaving and dyeing through education and then learnt independently free machine embroidery.

Ruth works on undyed, unprinted fabric and recommended Empress Mills Egyptian cotton bundles, although she noted that it is less well suited to hand stitching. She also likes to use vintage fabrics that have already had a life and (a more left field) suggestion, Boots absorbent sterile dressing rolls. Ruth builds and layers surfaces using hand dyed fabric and thread and fabric paints to paint backgrounds. In the talk she recognized that we don’t all want to hand dye, she also recommended variegated thread and suggested that they can be separated into strands and recombined so that the colours are more subtle and broken up. She uses machine and hand stitching and mentioned her love of colonial knots.

Ruth takes inspiration from the world around her and shared beautiful pieces, including pieces based on her beach-combing , one of which is pictured below.

Ruth is leading a workshop for the branch in November and we will be making botanical lanterns like these lovely examples pictured below. Given the success of our talk we can be confident of a good day.

We also held our usual raffle, with bags from Meriel and Brenda, shown below. Our next meeting on 13th November features Clair Cooper Walsh talking about mixed media textiles. The raffle bag colour is silver. We were reminded that the Christmas competition is ‘Frost’. Please enter if you can it is a chance to share our work and is celebratory rather than competitive.