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This website is in the process of closing down early in 2012. We have just launched a new website. to get to the new website click on www.megonline.co.uk
This exhibition featuring the embroidery of 10 of our members. The Gallery and Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday 10am -5pm, with free admision and a tearoom. Come and meet the artists and other members of our branch on Friday 21st October 2001 from 2pm till 5pm.
Design Morning on the theme of water to provide inspiration for our exhibition at the Cathedral next year.
Talk by Vivienne Brown on 'New Age Embroidery: From Bess to Bill'. An illustrated journey through the inventions that have influenced embroidery from the time of Queen Elizabeth 1 to Bill Gates. The talk will follow the AGM.
Could members please bring their completed Palestine postcards to give to June.
This lovely afternoon provided us with the opportunity to catch up with members after our summer holidays. Ruby brought her Sales tables from the Sreepur Orphanage and would like to thank the members for their generosity in raising money for the orphanage and the completed pieces of embroidery for the next fund raising quilt. Members are reminded that we are embroidering fish onto silk squares to make a quilt to show at the Cathederal next year and to raise money for the orpanage.
The members of the Merseyside Embroiderers Guild who had embroidered WW1 postcards where invited to the pre-opening reception for the people of Merseyside who had contributed to the Museum and helped to create the displays. At 8.30am, 400
golden ticket holder were given the opportunity of having coffee and pastries before being allowed to explore the Museum followed later by the opening ceremony at 10 o'clock. It was a fantastic experience to be part of history in the making. The opening coincided with the Liver Building, complete with the two Liver Birds, being 100 years old.
The building was declared officially open during a “People’s Opening” starting at 10am, led by National Museums Liverpool chair Phil Redmond and NML director Dr David Fleming, who Phil Redmond, who held the opening ribbon while Schoolboy Finn O'Hare, aged 6, cut the ribbon to officially open Liverpool's newest museum. To find out more go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpB5ebAaTCo
Voirrey Embroidery now has a new name and new owners. From Sept 10th - 29th Oct one of our members - Ann Rogers' North Wales group, 'Chameleon' are having an exhibition at the Voirrey Craft centre, Brimstage Hall. From what I know of this group, the work will be of a very high standard. There will also be a book on sale at the venue which shows the finished pieces plus samples and excerpts from their sketchbooks. Please support both Anne and the new owners by visiting the exhibition. Voirrey Craft Centre now offers a range of crafts along side embroidery threads, fabrics and some kits, as well as patchwork fabric, knitting and crochet threads, patterns, etc.
The open day was a great success and has hopefully attracted some new member. We held a 'come and experiment' morning with Merseyside Embroiderers’ Guild – Open Day Saturday 16 July 2011 free demonstrations of felting, crewel stitch, and make little
arpillera dolls,and Young Embroiderers crafts, plus tea and cake. In the afternoon there was a talk by Magie Relph on “Indigo the King of Colours”. Magie is a regular visitor and this talk was as enlightening as usual. We found out interesting
facts on the history of indigo, how the dye is made in Asia and Africa, as well as the different ways to create patterned fabric using indigo dye. This resulted in Magie sitting on the floor to demonstrate the best way to do a sunbrust pattern in tie-dye. Her African fabric shop providing endless choice of African fabrics, along with its baskets, beads and buttons was very tempting.
Ruby will be at the Town Hall displaying Traditional Kantha Embroidery and Textiles from Bangladesh from Mon 22nd to Fri 26th August. The exhibition will be open from 10am-4pm. Ruby received her MBE from Prince Charles on 22nd June 2011.
While it may sound strange to create leaf and flower patterns on plain fabric by hitting them with a hammer, it really did work. To begin with we made a sampler trying our the different leaves and flowers we had taken to find out which worked best. Linda provided us with some flowers she knew would work. During the afternoon we created a couple of flower pounded backgrounds to add embroidery to later using two different methods. It was certainly a new way to produce a design to embroider quickly and easily. We achieved these spectacular results with the minimum of skill using materials from our own gardens. The colours and shapes flowers transfer perfectly to create a quick background that can then be enhanced with embroidery, either hand or machine. Pansies, primulas and ferns work particularly well
A fasinating talk about how embroidery and beading has been used to bring about a change to the lifes of a group of people in South Africa through the Keiskamma Art Project. The talk was both instructive and inspiring. For further information on the project please visit our news page.
Our yearly Colour Competition in memory of Edna Billison was held after the talk and the glass trophy was awarded to Sarah Lowes.The prize was a £20 John Lewis voucher and the loan of the beautiful Edna Billison coloured glass trophy, to be held for one year. For those who are interested, the appliqué picture was cut from Kaffe Fassett plain fabric, and backed with a Kaffe Fassett patterned fabric. I drew round an old jug of my grandmother’s for the template and edged the piece in herringbone stitch. The background fabric was embellished with running stitch in various designs.
The Merseyside Branch of the Young Embroiderers Guild did us pround, yet again. Chloe won the Katherine Mansfield Trophy, with Hannah coming second. Well done, a great achievement.
Wendy, as an experienced tutor, soon helped us to use this traditional techique in a modern way.
Christine gave a very enthusiastic talk about threads and their development at Empress Mills, a family run business. We learnt about the different threads produced and their uses, some of which were unexpected. She brought the Empress Mills travelling shop and exhibit boards showing examples worked using the threads and other products.
The photograph shows Ruby Porter cutting a cake at the January meeting to celebrate having received special recognition in the New Year Honours List. she was awarded an MBE for her work at the Sree Pur Village Orphanage and Women's Refugee. She has been visiting the orphanage for 21 years and working there teaching embroidery. She has brought their work back to England to sell for funds, along with her other fund raising efforts. Ruby is a long standing branch member of 30 years and is a committee member. Ruby wishes to thank the Guild members for all their support in helping to make Quilts for fund raising. For further information about Sree Pur, along with fund raising efforts and exhibitions, please visit the 'Features Page'.
The Branch was held an exhibition in the Coach House in Calderstones Park from 12th April 2011. The theme of the exhibition was 'Gardens' this year. The Exhibition was opened on Monday 11th April at 3:30 by June lancelyn Green.
21 members exhibited work, including new members, and the exhibition was well recieved by local people. The branch are currently working on new embroideries for exhibitions later this year and next year. Details will be announced near to the exhibitions.
The Christmas Card Competition attracted a number of entries this year. Whilst they were all excellent the cute reindeer enchanted the voters. the reindeer made by Janet Wilkinson took the Prize. The Traditional Embroidery Competition is open to embroidery which is hand stitched using traditional techniques. This year the band sampler by Ann Thyer took the trophy - a framed lace collar and a gift voucher.
Members of Merseyside Embroiderer's Guild and '08 Tapestry Group have been busy making stitched textile postcards based on World War One Silk Postcards. They have produced beautiful and moving cards, often comemorating family members. These cards, along with more from other Liverpool Groups will be put together by textile artist Ticky Lowe to make a memorial banner. The banner will be displayed in the First World War gallery in the new 'Museum of Liverpool' to be opened in July 2011.
Again Alison gave us an excellent day course showing us how to make 'STITCHED SKETCHBOOKS', bring along a selection of her stitched sketch books to inspire us. She worked hard to enable us to go home with a finished or almost finished hand made book for our sketchwork. It was an interesting and thought provoking course. The work produced would also make lovely presents.
After the AGM, Valerie Hughes gave a very interesting talk on her work entitled 'Water, Snow and Ice'. The talk was very inspirational and we were able to see sketchbooks leading up to these garments.
The Gold and Silver Competition was won by Hilary McCormack with her or-nue goldwork flowers. She was presented her prize by Valerie Hughes.
The Tapestry meetings are now concluded. The stitching has been completed and the huge job of putting them all together has now begun. We would like to thank everone who took part in this massive project for all their help and support. We had no idea of how it would grow when we started it and the finished work will be stunning. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Joe Morris with the Lord Mayor looking at panels from the Liverpool 08 Tapestry displayed in the Walker Art Gallery on 7th September 2010, when Joe hosted a reception for all the stitchers of the tapestry.
The Tapestry was commissioned by `Home Bargains`:-`Liverpool 2008`
Once a month, stitchers met at the Unitarian church hall Ullet Road. Work was done on canvas with Appleton wools, using any technique appropriate to canvas. Members of Merseyside Embroiderers Guild provided drinks, encouragement and technical advice.
Some of the people involved in the Liverpool Tapestry Project-busy working!
Elsie Watkins, a guild member and former lecturer in Art and Design has produced an overall design, stitchers have chosen their own images of Liverpool to be inserted in appropriate spaces.
There are religious emblems, sea and ships, Iron men, a mechanical spider and quite a few Lambananas!
The Liverpool 08 Tapestry is in the process of being put together ready for exhibition in 2012. Further information about when and where it is being exhibited will be given nearer the time. It will be a delight for all the people who worked on panels to see how their panel/s fit into the overall design, once it has all been joined together.
Some examples of completed panel with a person busy working on a Bananalamb panel at one of the Saturday meetings.
Here is the first winner of the colour competition, launched in 2010 was Elsie Watkins, who gets to keep the beautiful glass trophy for a year. Cathy Turner is seen here presenting the trophy. Below are the other entries by Guild members, all showing their passion for colour.
Some of the colourful entries for the 'Colour Competition'
COACH OUTINGS are arranged to places of interest. We ran a branch outing to Standfast fabrics and Blackwell House, Bowness on July 20th last year. The trip was open to branch members, friends and family. We had a splendid day. The Fabric shop was stitching heaven and the Arts and Crafts house, well, most of us wanted to move in it was so beautiful. An excellent day out.
Standfast factory shop sells fabrics by Sanderson, Zoffany, Morris and Co, Liberties and many more. Some fabrics are as little £1.00 per metre, although most are £5.00 to £7.00. Blackwell House is the finest Arts and Crafts house in the country. You are bound to find Inspiration for your next stitching project there. There is a beautiful shop, garden and cafe, plus a William Morris exhibition.
Members compete annually in Traditional, Colour and Theme based events, including Christmas Cards. Work is also submitted for two Regional competitions.
