December Meeting

Here we are again at the close of another year of Connect in Threads.

Today we enjoyed a relaxing time working on our individual projects swathed in lovely music for the festive season courtesy of Clare

Work varied from Christmas decorations to completion of Christmas presents

 We are able to work so much better now we have been blessed with the extra plug sockets

Sue had bought some hand made books which were all sold - they were all different and beautiful. Sorry if you missed them - they were stunning and for a very good cause to raise funds for ''Friends of Young Achievers.''

The aim of the group is to help enable young people with varying degrees of disability to participate in society as independent, mature and responsible individuals. The current aim of the group is to support the young people to access the Duke of Edinburgh award.

You can help Heather and Sue to raise further funds by saving your used candles all year round. Heather is making candles to sell to raise funds. 

This patchwork one is mine - thank you Sue

 

Janet shared with us her mug bought by her husband

    

''My gorgeous wife Janet Connock; every day is like Xmas when I'm with you'' ... speechless!!

We were thrilled to welcome Ruth before lunch, who gave us an insight into her wonderful time spent in Jaipur in India. Here she is on the back of an elephant with her new friend from South Africa

 Wonderful indigo dyed fabrics...

 ...more indigo printed fabrics...

 ...little screens for 'printing' with sand, but Ruth has other ideas.

 Hand stitched elephant print, edged with hand embroidery

Ruth printed her own fabrics too on a workshop day with the experts

Some of the goodies Ruth purchased from hand made books to embroidered phone case with purse and hand carved blocks

With the indigo fabrics are some stunning 'serendipity' fabrics

Thank you Ruth for an entertaining and educational hour...not to mention our Christmas gift of an Indian woodblock.

***

After a wonderful buffet lunch, the afternoon continued with a lot of hard work

Pat made her Christmas decorations

 

Pat Withers was making wonderful Christmas stockings

Janet's Christmas quilt, with a close-up

Sue's family of Christmas owls - all with names!

So we end another year of fantastic work with friends. Thank you ladies, you are so inspiring and supportive to one another. I look forward to working with you again next year with our new ideas programme. This kicks off in January with our Indian design work...more details will be emailed in January. Merry Christmas everyone.

 

 

 

 

November with Colouricious aka Jamie Malden

It is approaching the end of the year and time for a treat with Jamie Malden from Colouricious - our third meeting with Jamie. We intend to make block printed fabric paper into books.

As we listened to Jamie, Alma stirred the paste ready to use

Jamie demonstrated the starting point of block printing to make the 'diamond' pattern

Begin in the centre...

...leaving a space print the second block and continue making the 'diamond' shaped radiating out

We began our block printing on ready prepared fabric paper, while awaiting to make our own sheet of fabric paper - 3 of our group were new to this technique and for the rest of us it was a good reminder exercise

Di is block printing and in the background are our fabric papers drying on the 'winter hedge'

Jean and Clare adding a second colour and making the prints their own

Overprinting and using additional blocks and another colour or two

Pat and Joy are working on their second of 3 prints - you can see the first 2 sheets, front right

The background has been sponged with fabric ink on the textured fabric paper before block printing in rows

Today we celebrated 2 birthdays... and sang to Elaine...

and then to Joy...''Happy Birthday ladies''

Jamie shared her expertise with us...

Discussing ideas of embellishment for our books with hand embroidery, ribbon and our precious photographs

Ruth is cutting and arranging her family photographs to decorate her hand made book

It was such fun to examine everyone's  photographs and lots of discussion arose on the history of the pictures

Hard at work compiling their books. Sylvia and Di concentrating on the layout of the pages before adding stitch

At the end of the day we had 3 books and one at least had the beginnings of photographs and stitch but obviously they would be taken home to be continued

Once again Jamie bought her 'car boot sale' and we were treated to some lovely new Indian blocks/gelli plates/printing inks. The gelli plates in 3 sizes, proved very popular after a demonstration from Jamie, using wood blocks on fabric. Thank you Jamie for the extra treat.
We are thrilled to have had the pleasure of Jamie's company and expertise again. It has been a lovely day and we have plenty to be working on in order to bring the books to the next meeting in December for completion and photographing.

October

Today is our Macmillan Nurses Coffee morning 

We celebrated with cake and a marvellous raffle for a pumpkin, organically grown and donated by Clare

 Well done Heather and Sue - the lucky winners

 Well done Sue - don't be shy

Today we also welcomed our new members. New members but old friends, Dina and Di

Today's quote has to be from Ruth when talking about Bondaweb - ''the Viagra of the Textile world.''

Ruth decided it was ''wear odd shoes day''...could catch on Ruth!

 

Lillian shared with us her work for a woven cushion on hessian using up oddments - 

...lovely textures and very quick to work

This is one in progress which Sylvia is making. The hessian is loosely woven and a plastic bodkin is used for the weaving

 Joy quilted her peas...Lillian hand quilted her throw and Margaret made great progress with her Wolverhampton postcard for the Bilston exhibition

Elaine's ''Rabbits'' quilt is progressing with it's ''hens teeth'' hand embroidered flowers

Ruth hammered in eyelets for her rings to link all the double sided 'pages' of her journal

 Janet worked on a holiday 'page' for her journal after a recent holiday in Spain

 Sue is working on an amazing project to raise funds for Heather's Duke of Edinburgh's Award group. This is one of her covers for a handmade book. Connect in Threads are proud to be able to support this project and will help all we can.

Heather loved making paper jigsaws for the Jigsaw project - all designed and coloured

Talking of Jigsaws - this one of Pat's,  is the last piece of the puzzle for the exhibition at Bilston

 

 Clare continued work on her commission piece of a book

Dina is working on crochet for a scumbles project - a technique mentioned on one of our previous blogs

Di has a lovely project on the go using natural dyes from her allotment - the results are fantastic. Di has used blackcurrants, nettles and raspberries.

 

Jude worked on 'over-printing' with her hand made blocks                    

 Please note that November's meeting is by invitation only as we have a visiting tutor from 'Colouricious.' Requirements will be emailed with the invitation and a car boot sale will be available with a host of hand made blocks, printing inks and materials.