Notes from the November meeting

Exploring possible exhibition venues: 

Delapre Abbey & 78 Derngate

• thanks to Yvonne for establishing contact with the Abbey.

• Sarah will visit both venues to view the exhibition spaces and report back at December’s meeting.

Rugby Museum & Art Gallery - Floor One

• Jan and Jane kindly agreed to contact with a view to getting Art to Stitch on their list of potential exhibitors.

Aylesbury Gallery

• For future consideration depending on outcome of above investigations.

Modern Architecture challenge

• the group affirmed they want to continue working on this challenge (one or two have completed their pieces….no pressure!).

• the theme is ‘Post War Architecture’.    Your inspiration needs to be a building or buildings within 50 miles of your residence.

• it has to be new work.

• you have free choice on dimensions, orientation, technique, colour etc, so make whatever you like as long as it fits the theme criteria.

• you are not restricted to a single piece.

• you are asked to produce a workbook alongside the making, plus a handling sample.

Constitution

• Sarah had kindly updated the group’s constitution to reflect the name change.
• It was decided to add a clause to the effect that if a member misses 4 consecutive meetings and no reason is given, it will be assumed they are no longer interested in attending and removed from the membership list.   Of course, should this situation occur, we will e mail the member to check this assumption before removing their name from the list.

Other

• December meeting 10/12 - Sally volunteered to help us invoke the festive spirit with a session on Glitz!     Sally will send a message round with more info and suggestions on what to bring if you want to participate.
• We will welcome the new year at our January meeting with a bring and share lunch.   Please bring a plate (sweet or savoury) if you are attending.
• Annual insurance payment - the fee is £5.   Please pay at the December meeting if you haven’t yet paid.
• Daisy book notes - thanks to Sally for last month’s session on her Daisy book.    Several people had missed the session and asked for Sally’s ‘jumping off’ notes to be circulated so they are attached here (for your personal use only). 

2019 dates

14 Jan

11 Feb

11 Mar

8 Apr

13 May

10 Jun

8 Jul

12 Aug

9 Sept

14 Oct

11 Nov

9 Dec.

Post WW2 Architecture work continues.

Interesting to see that we are making  some progress towards our architecture based exhibition theme. Here are a few snap shots of what we were doing on Monday.

Next Meeting - Monday 8th October

Next Monday Sally is going to share with us the creation of her "Daisy Book"
It is also you opportunity to collect the quilts you loaned for hanging at the Milton Keynes Literary Festival. Pleas check carefully that you only pick up your "bits" as we didn't always get to use the correct battens because of the way in which the pieces were hung from long poles.
This is also an opportunity to continue with your own work and to get back to our "Post WW2 Architecture" project as well as considering "What next!"

Anna exhibits at Festival of Quilts

Anna was invited to exhibit as a part of the City and Guilds Graduate Showcase at Festival this year in recognition of the outstanding work produced during the course.
Here are a couple of images of her stand. ( a difficult spot in which to take good images! sorry)

Our congratulations on this achievement.

MK Literary Festival Exhibition is now live......

Four of us spent today putting up our Literary exhibition being held at The Holiday Inn, Central Milton Keynes tonight, Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Our work is displayed in the Festival Foyer, the main hall and a second room. All the pieces have a literary theme from quotations from Shakespeare, poetry of Philip Larkin and a war novel.
The main stay of our show is a collection of A3 sized works made in response to a quotation from Daniele Vare's novel "The Maker of Heavenly |Trousers"

A3 pieces

In addition to these small linked pieces members submitted textile art works with a literary theme.

Breakout area

Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach

Seminar Room

Reach  for the Sky by Paul Brickhill

The view as you enter the main hall

The back wall of main hall

Main Hall

Exhibition planning details.

Now that we are into the final planning stages of our exhibition at Milton Keynes Literary Festival please note the following and help out where you can.

1. Hanging the display on Friday 21 Sept.    We have several volunteers to help but we could do with at least 1 more.    If you can help, please let Sally know as she is co-ordinating volunteers.      This would be from 5 pm on the Friday evening when we get access to the room.
2. Stewarding - we are short of stewards for Saturday, so again if you can possibly help out, please let Sally know.
3. Finished works - Sheila has kindly offered to produce listings of works and signage.    See below the information you need to supply for each piece you are submitting -  please e mail the information to Sheila and myself no later than 1 Sept.    If we don't hear from you by then, we’ll assume you’re not intending to anything into the exhibition on this occasion.

• A3 pieces:
• high res photograph of finished piece;   
• your name as you wish it to appear in the printed literature;
• ensure your name is on the back of the piece and that you have attached a hanging sleeve and batten.    The hanging team will need to attach fishing line to the batten to suspend works from the hanging rail on the wall.
• Literary pieces:
• high res photograph of finished piece;
• title of piece;
• inspiration source (in as few words as possible please!) or quotation as appropriate;
• size of finished piece;
• your name as you wish it to appear in the printed literature;
• ensure your name and the title of the work is attached to the back of the piece(s).   Again, hanging sleeve and batten per A3 piece.   

All finished pieces need to be brought to our September meeting (Monday 10th).    We know several people can’t be at that meeting so they will need to make arrangements to get their work either to Kislingbury on the 10th or to the venue on 21st Sept.

August activities

The group met just after many spent days at the Festival of Quilts. Much of the day was spent discussing the work that had been seen at the NEC and the work that will be hung at the Milton Keynes Literary Festival at the end of September.

This was the beginning of the group's pieces for our MK exhibition:

Members are reminded that their completed work must be brought to the meeting on Monday September 10th or given direct to Sally or Sarah by this date.

Members were also working on the following pieces:

Sheila

Sally

Sheena

Laura

Sarah

Chris

Next meeting Monday 13th August

Reminder that our next meeting is on Monday 13th August after Festival of Quilts.

Please bring along your pieces for the "

More exhibition Information

Jill has now sorted the measurements for our space at Milton Keynes Literary Festival. Her comments are below.

  Last week the steering committee confirmed with Holiday Inn that we can have access from 5pm on Friday to set up.

"I have now viewed the room at the Holiday Inn.  The wall that we can use is not as large as first thought measuring 26 feet.  It has a bar running the length which would take picture hooks or similar and this bar is 6 feet 3 inches above the skirting board.  Background wall colour is a sort of pale greeny/grey/cream.  I have attached a photo of the bar.  This would lend itself to smaller pieces and in view of this I think we should limit any pieces to a maximum length of 5 feet.  In this room there is also an alcove which is about 8 feet long and 18 inches wide which could perhaps take one of our quilt stands."

Amanda Hislop Workshop

On Tuesday we enjoyed a day on the theme of Abstracted Land.... Sixteen of us ready to explore the theme in our own ways.Here are some of the pieces we worked on in their raw state and as work in progress.

After collaging and painting the A3 sheets we then cut them to produce small books, each page showcasing an element of the initial sheet, concentrating the mind on detail.
These little books are very difficult to photograph and do them justice.

Amanda Hislop workshop requirements July 9th

The July 9th meeting is a workshop with Amanda Hislop with the title "Abstracted Land...."
Amanda says this day is: "A design workshop using drawn lines, colour washes, wax resist, collage and folding techniques to free up and create expressive compositions for development into stitch. Using the landscape as a starting point loose expressive mark making using a combination of drawn marks and torn collage work to create dynamic simplified compositions which can be fragmented using folding techniques to generate surprising abstract compositions."

Requirements:

• Inspirational material relating to landscape
• A sketchbook and drawing materials of choice including pens of various thiscknesses
• A collection of brushes
• Needles for hand stitch into paper (optional)
• Scissors
• Thin plastic, clear or white without writing to cover tables
• Cheap baby wipes for cleaning up
• Apron, overall, plastic gloves if wanted
• A hairdryer

Papers, threads and art materials and resources for student use will be supplies at cost of £5. Do bring any papers and materials you may have to add to the collection available.

Exhibition Publicity

Exhibition of
Literary Textile Arts
Art to Stitch

Holiday Inn, Central Milton Keynes

Friday 21 - Monday 24 September

MK Lit Fest will be hosting a specially commissioned exhibition of textile art inspired by books, authors, writing and reading.

Fabric artists at the cutting edge of quilt making, the group work in textiles to create innovative and dynamic art. Members all have different specialist skills and approaches to design and contemporary quilt making, some approach the creative process from an art base and others from an experiential perspective; each producing very different and varied 2 and 3D textiles, art textiles and wall art.

Exhibiting at Milton Keynes Literary Festival 2018

We are now in the final run up to our exhibition at the Literary festival in Milton Keynes. Their website has now gone live and here is the link to our page.

https://www.mklitfest.org/contemporary-quilt-exhibition

Art to Stitch

Art to Stitch were formally known as Weedon Bec Creative Textiles Group and their previous Blog contains details of the the activities the group have enjoyed over the last 7 years.

See that at Weedon Bec Creative Textiles Group Blog