MARCH Meeting

We began our March meeting with a discussion about our work which was hung this week at the Cone on the Stourbridge Road. Our dresses and the Hundertwasser Street hang proud and look amazing. Photographs will follow soon. Congratulations ladies!

 Back to work...Elaine is using her stash to make beautiful bespoke needle cases using tent stitch on a painted canvas she prepared today

 Ruth is piecing indigo for her project - a difficult combination of velvet and cotton

Lovely design Pat P

 Joy's new project using some of her stash

 The cotton reels have been scanned and printed on Joy's printer ready to stitch

 Roberta is de-constructing an Indian hanging to 're-build it'

 Pat D's hand embroidery

 This quilt is the work of our new member Annie who we welcomed to CIT today

Her use of colour is bold and playful - Annie will have no problem fitting in

 Janet L is making a beautiful quilt

Debbie is hand embroidering an old cushion with Stef Francis and Perle threads

 Lillian is also making gifts of pins and needles cases in a neutral palette

 Beautiful Lillian

We worked hard on our COLOUR BOOKS today with lovely 'free' painting

We looked at brush techniques - layering washes - wet on dry - wet on wet - stippling - masking - and using a fan brush

Claire


Lorraine's Colour Book                             Using water colours
                        Kay's colour book pages
We have also decided on our next group piece...here are our group decisions:-

1. We are making a frieze of Elephants - 3 different sizes. If you have any templates we can use please bring them to the April meeting. The elephants will be completed by the Summer August garden party.

2. Our 'fair weather project' will be drawing and photographing in the grounds of Bantock with the aim of exhibiting in their exhibition space.

3. We are each to design an individual piece of our own choice using a limited palette. Namely, black, white, grey and one colour of our own choice. You can start designing now and the measurements for the finished piece will be announced soon. We aim to frame each piece uniformly with Ribba frames.

Exciting times
Jude

February Meeting

Our room today was decked with our personal hand made pinafore dresses

Each one began life as a piece of cream calico

 Here is Clare's with a close-up. "Fragments of what makes her on the outside - covering what is on the inside"

Here is Pat's. "Down in the water, ducks are a dabbling"

 2  three-dimensional birds are on the shoulder; close-up below

 Lorraine's dress complete with antique lace scarf

 "Treasured memories"

 Close-up of Lorraine's dress

 Alma chose to dip dye both the front and the back of her pinafore

 "I love purple and magnolias and had this material" for applique

 Debbie

 "It's green...I never work in green"

 Janet L "tried to use all of the techniques I've been learning"

 Pocket detail of Janet's pinafore

 Pat P is still working on her pinafore "Poppies, not in remembrance, just the beauty of the flower"

 Elise "Inspired by Autumn, woodlands, berries and seeds"

 Close-up of Elises's pinafore

 Pocket close-up of Denise's pocket

 Denise's vision in blue with wonderful hand boro stitching.

 We worked on our Colour books and a variety of other things concentrating on the forthcoming exhibition at the Cone in March

 This large piece is Janet C's wonderful Hundertwasser

Janet has worked in black and white for many years and this has really been out of her comfort zone

 Elaine's boro work using up little pieces of blue and white and covered with hand embroidery

 Joy's Leaves

 Colour Books - this one is Di's take on the Black Country

Sylvia's Colour book - wonderful textured and detailed Kingfisher

 Practice sheets experimenting with colour

 Using two colours and tones of those colours, juxtaposed with a colour that you would never normally put with your two colours. Well done Lorraine - lots of colour palettes for future projects here

 Ruth "Above and Below" (the title of our exhibition in March)

 Elise "Above and Below

Well done ladies; it has been a wonderful atmosphere today with dresses hanging from the window frames, table-tops full of Art books and textiles, and a floor with end to end Hundertwasser fabrics