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!

Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow

Hare Today
Gone Tomorrow

I have been making a hare for quite a long time.  I learned the wirework armature technique at a workshop with Jo Smith in summer 2021.  

Preparing the hare armature

I didn't finish making all the armature body parts at the workshop but I did finish them quite soon after...

Hare Armature Body Parts 

Then they languished for quite a time until spring 2022 when I finished preparing them for the next phase...

The fire pit part

which involved fire in my old barbecue (which we'd used as a fire pit and still had some wood in) and lots of newspaper to keep the fire going.  The fire burnt off all the support for the wire leaving just the wire structure.  It took quite a long time but then I had all the parts...

I finally wired them together to make the completed hare armature...

Completed armature

Then came the task of partly covering my hare in fabric which I stitched on. It became much easier once I started using a curved needle...

Using a curved needle made stitching easier 

His paws have a bit of stitched detail and he is partly covered in a collage of stitched fabrics... 

He is only part stitched as I wanted some of the wire to be visible.  His stitched half is standing on some knitted grass with stitched dandelions and his wire half on a bare brick.  He could represent the present and the future if the destruction of the environment takes hold or he could just be showing how he is made - the interpretation is yours.

My Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow exhibit will be on display at the York Embroiderers & Stitchers(YES) exhibition  "A Celebration of Stitch" at the end of June 2022 - details here.   Do come along and see him for real!

Mixed Media with Josie Beszant at ArtisOn

Josie Beszant

Had a lovely day recently at ArtisOn near Masham attending a mixed media workshop led by Josie Beszant.  Josie is a mixed media and collage artist who also runs Masham Gallery (which is well worth a look if you're in the area). We spent a pleasant day making samples some of which you can see below...

Watercolour & resist

Watercolour & resist

Watercolour & charcoal

 

Gouache & oil pastels

Gouache & oil pastels

We learnt about layering, mixing, spattering and scraping and then moved on to stamping, printing with plants, collage and transfer techniques... 

Stamping

Printing with plants

Josie had an abundance of vintage postcards and I was on a roll collaging on those.  Here are a few...

Collaged postcards

Collaged postcards

Collaged postcards

Josie had lots of materials for us to use and was very generous with them. 

Gaynor and Sue who run ArtisOn are very friendly and welcoming and we had a spectacular 2 course lunch prepared by Vanessa. Throughout the day we were plied with plenty of tea, biscuits and cake.  It was all splendid!  You can check out all the workshops that ArtisOn put on here.  Josie also runs art and wellbeing experiences at Happy House Masham.

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!

Unusual Mixed Media Embellishments with Jessica Grady

My dyed mixed media embellishments - elastic bands, cable ties, cotton buds & more

Recently I went on one of Jessica Grady's "Make Your Own Mixed Media Embellishments" workshops which was great fun.  

Detail of Jessica Grady's work

More examples of Jessica Grady's work

 
Jess is an embroidery artist and is inspired by surface textures such as barnacles and peeling paint.  Her work is truly original, colourful and inspirational.  She describes her work as "encrusted" and makes her own embellishments out of all sorts of unusual materials.  Jess's work has been featured in various magazines - Fibre Art Now (Spring 2018), Reloved (Issue 54) and the Embroiderers' Guild members' magazine Contact (46), not to mention online at Mixed Up magazine & Art Reveal (Issue 38)...

 

Fibre Art Now & Reloved Articles

Jess taught us to make our own embellishments and provided lots of different materials to experiment with.  It was interesting to see how each material took up the colours. 

Dyed paper & tyvek

And when we were spray painting - the background paper ended up looking great too...
 

Painted metal, wood & plastic embellishments

We spent the day dyeing, painting, melting and foiling...

"Sequins" from melted plastic

 

Foil added to the painted embellishments

Now I have lots of interesting materials to work with - thanks Jess!  If you fancy doing one of Jess's workshops, you can see what's coming up here.

You'll be hearing lots more about Jess this year.  She has become the Under 30's 2018 Embroiderers' Guild Scholar and so will be exhibiting at this year's Knitting & Stitching Shows in London, Harrogate & Dublin & will be appearing at Art& in York as an installation artist. 

Some of Jess's work will be on display at the City of York Embroiderer's Guild Triennial Exhibition from 22-24 June 2018 at the Tithe Barn in Nether Poppleton, York. More details here.  Why not come along!