Our Exhibition is hung in Grasby Church ready for the West Lindsey Churches Festival this weekend, 10am to 5pm on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12. When we all left it all looked beautifully displayed and very colourful, along with flowers real and stitched, lots of work by all six of us, using a variety of hand and machine embroidery, and a variety of textile and other techniques.
On display is the altar cloth that Grasby Embroiderers did years ago as a group project, long before I was invited to join some 10 years ago. I’ll finally get to have a good look at it when I’m stewarding there on Sunday, and have a closer look at some of the others’ work in more detail. (Photo below not Grasby Church.)
The banner that we all did a few years ago is on display also, this time where you can get up close to see it in more detail. Work books for both projects are there as well, with samples and explanations of some of the processes used.
As I wrote at the end of Not black blackwork! (part 2), I needed to do some unpicking on the left hand tower to mirror image the diaper. That wasn’t too difficult, but when I tried to stitch the pattern, I got in a right muddle several times, even after I had flipped it on the computer and only needed to follow it.
After I finally lost patience with it, I put in a variation on the two smaller towers.
Simple and effective.
I then put in the centre part of the bottom tower.
I decided to start at the top and work down, rather than working up from the bottom, and for some reason this worked better. I still had to concentrate and take it slowly …..
…… but eventually got there.
I definitely need to work on it with no distractions around, at least until I have got into the rhythm of the pattern. I now have to work out the patterns that I want for the next sections.
However, other pieces for the Grasby Embroiderers’ Exhibition next weekend have taken precedence.
After our “Out in the garden” exhibition last year, what were we doing and where were we going as a group this time?
It was suggested that we did an exhibition at All Saints Church in Grasby as part of West Lindsey Churches Festival.
Although the Festival is over two weekends in May, the Grasby Church and our exhibition are open only on 11 and 12 May, 10am-5pm.
As for “what”, we took a new title of “Botanicals”, which has been interpreted completely differently by each of the six of us, as always. In the end, my pieces were inspired by this photograph of hydrangeas that I took many years ago.
We’ve all done a piece in a black frame called “Putting the garden to bed”, based on taking down the “Out in the garden” exhibition last August. Some of the pieces are from “Out in the garden”, but will look completely different in the different setting.
Jean gave us all a lovely piece of vintage linen tablecloth with a pre-printed design, and even with so much the same starting point, we have six very varied finished pieces of work.
We all had 8-plus labels for our own work at the last meeting, and there is also a large communal piece to see, that we’ve all contributed to.
Local ladies are providing refreshments (but there’s no loo, so don’t drink too much tea!). We are taking turns with the stewarding and answering any questions about the work. There are fabulous views over the Wolds from the church porch, and if the weather is clear enough you can even see Lincoln Cathedral.
It was a busy time at the Grasby Embroiderers Exhibition last weekend. The first visitors arrived before we were officially open, but it worked well as we were all ready anyway and good to have keen viewers.
There were several bodies of work on display, some of which had not been seen before, including the bras, a fund raiser for Breast Cancer. We had all started with a white bra, the same size (36FF), so plenty of space to stitch. The brief was a famous woman, real or fictitious. We all had completely different ideas which ended in very different looking bras; from the top left: Grace Darling, Claire / Grayson Perry, Snow Queen (mine), Shirley Bassey (Gold Finger), bottom left: Flower Power, and Gertrude Jekyll.
I used white and siver threads to stitch simple snowflakes in various sizes, Angelina fibres to sparkle and catch the light, fluffy yarn to look like snow-drifts, and strings of beads to represent icicles. The bras were stuffed and stitched on to a painted canvas
We each started one body of work (“New Beginnings”) with a pack of black and white threads, fabrics, papers, etc., a different stitch to play and experiment with, a page of quotes for self reflection and the starting point of one of two sayings: “Time and tide wait for no man” or “Castles in the air”. Also we had a white Ikea frame for a piece “Where we started”.
Two thoughts immediately jumped into my head: the song “Both sides now” by Joni Mitchell and the German fairytale castle Neuschwanstein, which we had visited years ago with our German friends.
My stitch was Half Rhodes stitch, a canvas work stitch. This was where my preliminary ideas started, but in my pack had been a piece of wallpaper with half a butterfly on, which I played around with in PhotoShop, mirror-imaging it, horizontally and vertically. This led to the swan pieces below of white on black and black on white in tiny reverse chain stitches. In the other white frame are Lorna’s sand ripples in sorbello stitch (white on white), and in the foreground her “Time and tide” piece.
The red and white box, with silhouette of a castle round the four sides, has a tiny bead and wire red swan on a little mirror hidden in the bottom of the box. The starting points evolve and develop as the work progresses. Most of the rest of the group ended up using colour in their pieces, but it was good to go back to basics and look at line / shape / form and texture, and work in sketchbooks
The flowers and angels were new bodies of work for our exhibition at The Old Rectory in Epworth, but looked different in a different setting and differently staged. My tulip on the left had lost its shape and form a little at Epworth, the humidity had made it wilt. It may need a couple of tiny stitches to anchor it, but so far it seems OK where I have hung it at home. The black cloth makes the other flowers sing, but drains the pale green of my canvas and makes it appear white, at least in the photograph.
I love the bright colours and abstraction of Mary’s angel, a complete contrast to my cream angel with very fine gold thread and simplistic stitching. Her wonderful flower, behind on the right, is so free, and the use of colour is stunning; if I were to try something like that it would look overdone and a mess, because not knowing when to stop would be my downfall.
The lockdown challenges are a riot of colour when all displayed together, just what we needed to keep our spirits up, a surprise through the post each month, giving an ideal opportuntity to experiment and play with some new and different techniques.
The red dado rail behind my “I am little” work was a happy accident, but unfortunately I took the photo before the radiator had been covered with another black cloth. This was part of the “Revisted” project, and most of the others developed earlier work from old sketchbooks and bodies of work from before I joined the group. I took the title of “Portrait” that had been used some time ago. It started at just the right time when we were emptying my dad’s house, and came across my infant school books and old black and white photos of when I was four and five. The title comes from a page in my first school book, with the tiny drawing reproduced on the left and on my name plate.
There was a sales table (fabric, inspiration packs, our postcards) and a tombola, both of which all but sold out. The money from these was split equally between Grasby Church and Breast Cancer.
Tea and coffee, and homemade cakes and biscuits (donations to Grasby Church) with well spaced tables, the weather was bright and sunny, so it was easy to have the doors open for good ventilation. It all felt safe and welcoming, with a steady stream of visitors, but never so many together that it felt crowded.
It seemed that most of the visitors on Saturday and Sunday morning were fellow stitchers, and mainly locals on both afternoons. No rhyme or reason for this, but it was a very friendly atmosphere and lots of the visitors knew one or more of us. It was good to see people that we’d not had any contact with since March 2020 at least, so lots of chatting and catching up, and compliments about the work.
debbidipity 