Programme for 2025/2026

 The new programme is now uploaded to the Programme page above. After the lovely summer we have had (unless you're a farmer), it will be great to see everyone again.

AGM and Challenge

 Our AGM was held today as we break up for the summer. The new committee members were elected, secretary's and treasurer's reports read, and Nancy and Pat received lovely gifts of flowers and plants as they stood down from their roles. 

We had a lovely tea with tasty bakes by the committee, and the Challenge was voted for. This year the theme was 'Happiness', and Norma won with her beautiful book, which had many pages with embroideries inspired by what family members defined as happiness, including holidays, fishing, Prosecco and Jaguar cars!

We will meet up again On Wednesday 17th September. Hope everyone enjoys a wonderful summer.

'How to Take a Good Photograph' - talk by Jeni Reid

We enjoyed a very interesting and helpful talk from Jeni on taking good photos with our phones. Jeni is a professional photographer and takes stunning pictures, but her tips and advice were geared to us 'happy snappers'. She explained how to choose good compositions and to edit these to get the best components of a picture. 

Advice on looking in the every day for our inspiration, and thinking about whether homing in on a subject or drawing back would suit it better. 

Looking at the light and shadows to achieve a particular ambience, and how to choose the right setting to take advantage of the light, to make the subjects softer or crisper, and the effect of the colour or the light, e.g. cold winter light or warm lamplight.

Taking photos from a different angle, such as kneeling g or even laying down to get a different perspective on the subject.

Tips for taking photos of people included not posing them, but snapping them while they are doing something and are unaware, as we all tend to 'freeze' when being posed.

And a clever tip for a group photo to avoid someone having their eyes closed - tell everyone to close their eyes, count to three and open them, and take the snap - simple and brilliant!

I shall definitely take these tips on board, and hope my not very great photos will improve.

Stitch And Chat

 Around once a month we have a 'Stitch and Chat' - an informal meeting where everyone does their own thing, bringing along whatever they are working on, having a cup of tea and biscuits, and a good natter. It's great way for anyone to get help and advice from other more experienced ladies, and see all sorts of other ideas, and spend a couple of hours with likeminded friends.

'Using a Photographic Image as a Basis of a Stitched Piece' - day school with Andrea McMillan

 Andrea brought along a large selection of her beautiful art quilts to inspire us to use a photo as a basis for a quilt or wall hanging. She provided photo of a sea stack on a beach (the first picture below), which we used to make a small A5 sample or her technique.

The technique involved tracing the image, transferring it to paper, and then making a collage with tissue paper (second pic), in order to see the areas of the photo as 'blocks' of colour, enhanced with coloured pencil, and not get bogged down into detail. We then traced the blocks onto Bondaweb, which we adhered onto fabric scraps according to our colour scheme. Everyone's was different, even though the picture source was the same. It's always fun choosing a fabric to portray a piece of beach, say, and seeing the choices everyone makes from the fabric stash. Using more bits of fabric to add detail means less stitching, or we could keep the larger pieces to fabric patches and do more stitching, so it will be exciting to see the end results of everyone's choices.

We all had our pieces more or less glued down, ready to take home and finish at our leisure. It was very interesting learning a new technique.

Sally went 'off piste' and is doing her dog on the beach. I did too, but haven’t got round to cutting out yet.

'Using your Scraps - day school,with Nancy Craig

 Nancy taught a useful day school on how to utilise those annoying bits of fabric that aren't big enough to be used on their own. Here are some pics of cute wee hearts, sachets and bags.

Day School with Linda McIntyre - Making a Table runner

 Some photos here from a day school on making a table runner. Hope to have more to add when more are finished!