York Embroiderers and Stitchers - A Celebration of Stitch

A Celebration of Stitch

York Embroiderers and Stitchers (YES) are a friendly group of stitch and textile enthusiasts of all levels of ability and experience who meet on the first Saturday of every month at Haxby Memorial Hall in Haxby, York. Recently (last weekend) they had an exhibition "A Celebration of Stitch" at the Tithe Barn in Nether Poppleton, York. There was a vast array of traditional and contemporary embroidery featuring work on a theme of hedgerows. In fact as well as a beautiful hedgerow banner and lots of lovely hedgerow related work, there was also a hedgerow! 

Details from the Hedgerow Banner and YES logo

Details of the Hedgerow

And work based (loosely) on a theme of hedgerows...

Jeanette Davies - Garrowby hill

Chris Small - Hedgerow

Barbara Cox - Shooting

Jose Gledhill - A June Hedgerow

Liz Farmery - Ouch!

Moira Wood - Lie Long Fields of Barley and of Rape

Gina Smith -The Hedgerow & Jill Slijper - Come for a Walk

Sue Giles - Box

There was lots of the other work on show too...

Carol Coleman - Slice of the Past 1V

Marina McCleave - Pumpkin Pie

Judith Johnson - Book in a Tin

Nicky Brunger - Under the Greenwood Tree

Janet Caldwell - Circles

Shirley Smith - Page 18

Eileen Gibson - Cityscape

Heather Cawte - Four Elements: Water

Maggie Smales - Shakespeare

Jane Murray - Map

Colleen Nicholl - Ideas Board 2

Shenagh Linton -
Miss Doris Shepherd

YES had also been working on a stitched postcard project on the theme of landscape, instigated by Chris Beavers.  Here are some detail shots of each postcard and you can see more of these and who made each one on the YES Facebook page here or on their Instagram account here.

Details of the Landscape Postcard Exhibit

For those who like a challenge, there was a "Guess the Musicals" Competition. Stitched representations of 12 musicals were on display for you to identify.  The prize was a £25 M&S voucher.  Some were easy and others really hard. Now the competition has passed I can show you all the stitched musicals and the answers...

Guess the Musicals Competition & Answers

The Travelling Book was also on show.  This is where a book is passed between members and each member includes a different technique...

Travelling Book - pages by Josie Storey, Jose Gledhill and Sandra Atkin

If you want a quick reminder of what I was exhibiting, you can see them below.  You can read more about the making of the 3D hare here, the embroidered tree here and I hope you guessed my entry in the musicals competition.  My other two pieces - a stitched robin and a stitched hare - were from workshops with Mandy Patullo.

Hippystitch Exhibits
Thanks to Alyson Cowen for the 3D Hare Today Gone Tomorrow image 

As well as all the work on display there was a sales table, and yes, reader, I couldn't resist a few treasures for myself!  And , importantly, all through the exhibition there was tea, coffee and scrummy cake available to keep you going (no pics, sorry - too busy enjoying it!)

Sales Table - Kits, Books, Threads & Fabric

Nicky from Nicky Brunger Crafts was also there with her lovely cross stitch kits, notebooks and haberdashery. 

Altogether, it was a great exhibition with some amazing work on display.  I've tried to give a flavour of the variety of work but there was much more than I have featured. YES are a friendly bunch - I admit a bias as I'm also a member of YES.  Why not come and join us at one of the monthly YES meetings and see for yourself!

Can-Do Crafts - Stitched Panel

 

The City of York Embroiderers' Guild is making a wallhanging for the Folk Hall in New Earswick, York to represent the groups that meet there.  I have been making the panel for the Can-Do Crafts group.  My brief included the size of the panel, that it should be landscape in orientation and that it must include the group's name.  Apart from that, I had free rein.  I spoke to textile artist, Deborah New, who took the group in 2019/2020 to find out what the group had been making.  It sounded like a great group to be part of - they'd tackled weaving, patchwork, felting, simple embroidery and stitching and other textile based crafts.  Deborah also promoted the use of recycling and upcycling in her teaching to make best use of resources.  (If you like the sound of Deborah's style, she is teaching a Hand Stitched Fabric Robins workshop on Zoom with York Learning on 28 November 2020.  You can find out more here.)

Blue/black denim base fabric

In keeping with Deborah's recycling ideas I used some blue/black denim from an old pair of jeans as the base fabric and hoped to use scraps and leftover fabrics, threads and yarns for everything else. 

Various Fonts

Starting with the group's name, I printed it out in a number of different fonts and sizes to see what would work with the panel size - something quite tall and not too wide was what I was looking for. It turned out that Bahnschrift Condensed fitted the bill! The printed out font acted as a template for the letters.  Next, using scraps of colourful patterned fabrics I ironed on bondaweb, a double sided fabric adhesive with a paper backing.  Then using the printed letters that I had already cut out, I reversed them, placed them on the bondaweb paper backing, drew round them and cut them out. 

Font Template and Cut Out Bondawebbed Letters

These were then ironed onto the base denim fabric after the paper backing had been removed.  I had zigzagged the edges of the denim panel to stop them fraying and had stitched a line round (to be removed later) beyond which I didn't want to go when adding the rest of the design so that it wouldn't get lost in the seams.  I allowed a little more than the seam allowance to be on the safe side.

Lettering Ironed in Place

I had chosen 3 of the techniques the group had learned to make small pieces to be part of the panel - weaving, patchwork and felting... 

Weaving

Patchwork

Small Felted Purse

Also, I thought it would be nice to add some text to the piece mentioning some of the techniques used.  This was done as though it was the thread coming out of a needle.  To make the needle, I ironed some bondaweb onto the back of a scrap of silver fabric and drew a needle shape, which was then cut out, ironed on and machine stitched in position.  Using tailors chalk I roughly drew a line where I wanted the stitching to be and set off.  I had a practice go on a spare bit of denim that helped me decide how to place the words.

Wording Complete

After that, I machine stitched round the letters of the group's name twice, and stitched the three sample pieces in position.  The patchwork piece was machine stitched on.  The weaving sample was hand sewn in position and the felt purse was attached with a combination of the two. As a final touch I added some simple embroidery stitches - chain stitch and cross stitch, that the group might have used in their work.  Finally I took out my stitching guidelines round the edge and the panel was complete...

Finished Panel for the Can-Do Craft Group

And now it's on its way to join the other panels.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day from Hippystitch

I'm wishing you all love on Valentine's Day!  This year I made a different sort of Valentine's Day card.  It's mixed media, 3D and includes some free machine embroidery. Hope you like it.

Have a great day!

A Workshop with Angie Hughes

The textile group I belong to (Nest of Makers) organised a weekend workshop with Angie Hughes, textile artist & tutor, and I was lucky enough to go along.  Here are some of Angie's samples ...

Here are some of the materials we used ...

We all started off on day 1 with white cotton velvet on firm iron on vilene.  And with the use of dye-na-flow inks, black ink, thick bleach, acrylics, stencils, printing blocks, sheers, foils and machine embroidery we made our journey to the end of day 2.

And here are our results at the end of day 1 and day 2 ...

Alice ...

Bryony ...

Fiona ...

Gill ...

Heather ...

Janine ...

Jo ...

Nadine ...

Me ...

Stefanie ...

Although not yet finished, each one turned out wonderful and different - a great weekend. Thanks, Angie and thanks to Heather & Nadine for organising it!