Programme 2011 - 2012 reviews

June 27th - Maryke Phillips - Textile Artist
'My Quilting Obsession'
Maryke's quilt obsession began when, as a teenager in the 60's, she was introduced to a fabric shop by a colleague. After making several garments she eventually made her wedding dress and the bridesmaids' dresses with fabric from John Lewis, and later moved on to making curtains with fabric from Laura Ashley. Maryke's first patchwork throw was made of 4" squares, sewn on her Grandmother's Singer machine. Not fully understanding how to quilt, she merely stitched the four corners to hold the layers together. Maryke enrolled in a City and Guilds course, but, due to ill health she could not complete it and had to wait a further two years to enroll again.  Read more...
Reviewed by Anne Hawkins

May 24th and 25th - Francis Pickering 
Workshop - 'Books to Cherish'

Members spent a busy two days with Francis and said...

"It was one of the most interesting workshops I've been on."
"A relaxing two days, lots of fun."
"It was so exciting, I wanted to go home and finish my book straight away, but I couldn't." 
"A well organised workshop, helpful hubby Jim, was great at cord winding."
"It was absolutely fascinating, I wish I was as clever as Francis."

After hearing their reports and seeing the beautiful books that were made, many of us wished we'd been there too. 
Maybe next time. 

April 25th - Sally Ablett - Quilt Designer

Sally told us about her work as a designer for Fabric Freedom, she displayed an amazing array of quilts that showed her love of colour. Sally uses a program called EQ to design her quilts, this enables her to change colour schemes, block size and arrangements at the touch of a button - the old way of using graph paper and colouring pencils was too time consuming. for her. Sally's son used to write up all her instructions and she had us all laughing as she said he knew all the blocks and how to make up the quilt before she had told him. She was very amusing and there was much laughter at her stories. 
Sally has had her work published in Patchwork and Quilting and Popular Patchwork magazines. In addition, her work has been published in Christine Porter's book and Sally  now hopes to write her own book next year. Sally designs her own patterns under the name Pippa's Patch, named after her dog.
Sally gave a fantastic talk and brought many quilts with her. My favourite were the daisies, which had been stitched and pieced and then placed on another stitched piece, giving a 3D frame effect. 
Reviewed by Jo

March 28th - Fay Maxwell - Textile Artist

This evening we were entertained by Fay's fascinating talk on her experiences or 'happy accidents' as an embroiderer. Her work isevolving all the time. Much of Fay's work is based on traditional stitches and techniques, but interpreted in a very modern and different way.
 It was a pleasure to be able to see and handle the large variety of  beautiful work that Fay passed around  the group. It was an inspirational evening and made even more pleasurable by the beautiful array of silk, felt, sheers and other fabrics that Kay ( Fay's sister) had brought along for members to purchase if they wished. 
Reviewed by Marcia 

February 22nd - Hilary Gooding- Contemporary Quilter

Hilary's talk took us  through her quilt career,beginning, as many of us do, with piecing over papers. Hilary quickly progressed through the traditional sampler stage with simple machine quilting, making the transition to modern work creating abstract pieces. We saw, and were able to handle, many of the quilts that illustrated her journey, the range of work was truly inspiring. Hilary showed us many of the journal quilts she has worked on with themes such as, Gold, Water, Moons, all of which she regarded as 'a good opportunity to work on new techniques'.  Hilary was an enthralling speaker and  I look forward to seeing her future work. Take a look at her site www.hilarygooding.weebly.com
Reviewed by Terri