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October 2014 Day School -                                                            Pauline Parker 'Working With Evalon'

6/10/2014

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We had all been looking forward to attending the branch meeting in October, as most people had taken their holidays and the hustle and bustle of Summer had come to an end. It was also time to hold our AGM and we had an interesting workshop to attend.

There was the annual competition, for the 'Gertrude Goodenough' trophy and members were invited to put a piece of their work down on the table and throughout the day we would all vote for which piece we thought should win.

Pauline Parker has taught textile art for 40 years, and today we were going to learn about working with a fabric called 'Evalon'. We were told that Evalon is a very versatile fabric, as it can be cut out with a soldering iron or scissors, it can be stamped, printed onto or even painted. When painted the fabric will soak up the liquid like osmosis - just a little goes a long way.

We were all given an instruction pack and Pauline began her demonstration.

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Some of us improvised and used the windows in the room, as our 'light box' so that we could get our work done more quickly. 



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Before soldering, we had to trace the flower heads onto our Evalon fabric, by using a light box. We had a large lightbox for tracing our patterns, plus one of our members had kindly brought a small one of her own, for us to use.






As you will see here, we were shown how to cut out our flowers using a soldering iron on top of a baking tray.


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Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and those of us who perhaps had not used a soldering iron before, found that some of our leaves shrivelled, and we decided that these would be 'rustic' flowers instead.

Paints were mixed with lots of water, so that subtle colours could be achieved, when painting onto bondaweb. This was done, so that we could iron the bondaweb onto a piece of cotton frabric, to give a background colour to our flowers.


Our bondaweb was left to dry, whilst we painted our flowers. Firstly Pauline showed us all how quickly paint is absorbed into Evalon, and to try a sample dot first to see how far the paint will travel. She then showed us how to colour the middle of each flower head.

As with all our meetings, those who do not wish to attend the workshop, can work together in our side room, they can bring any project that they are working on, and have time to not only catch up on some of this work, but to have a catch up with everyone else or perhaps learn a few new stitches from one of our mentors.




You can always tell when a workshop is going well, as everyone stays for as long as they can, to try to get as far as possible with their work. We all seemed to find this so interesting, and were really enjoying ourselves.

 

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Pink paint was added to the tips of our petals and they were left to dry.
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As our bondaweb was now dry, Pauline demonstrated how to attach this to our fabric with a hot iron, and peel off when cold. We were also asked to use a square frame, to decide where the centre of our picture would be, depending on the outcome of our paints.

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Pauline began to demonstrate how to sew two of the larger flower heads together on some background material.  In this way, when the flowers are sewn onto the coloured fabric, they will stand out. The smaller flowers were to be stitched straight onto the fabric, so that they would lie flat.

At the end of the afternoon, although we didn't get all of our flowers sewn on, we have put square frames over our work to show how hopefully they will look when completed. I think everyone did really well!

During the course of the day, we held our AGM and on working through the agenda, everyone who had been on the committee for the past year, were praised and thanked for all their hard work.  We then voted in the committee for the next year.  We also received information about our next Chairmans' Challenge, which is to make a small bag that would hold something precious, something that would also be small enough to hang from a Christmas Tree. The work will be judged at our Christmas meeting in December.

We also announced the winner of our Gertrude Goodenough competition. Here are the entries




And here is the winning entry made by Sylvia Maudsley - well done Sylvia!

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September 2014 ‘Follow the Thread’ Exhibition at Barton Grange Garden Centre.

1/10/2014

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The committee and members gathered on Monday 15th September ready to set up the bi-annual exhibition of the Preston Branch. The theme-‘Follow the Thread’.  

Thanks to Chris Cannon and Sue Abbott who led the way in organising the troops. The first task was to straighten the clips and wires ready to hang the work. In the meantime staff from Barton Grange set up the glass cabinets. Then it was all hands to the pump as work was unpacked and sorted into groups on well labelled tables
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The workshop/day school work was displayed first and then individual work. The cabinets were tastefully arranged and fortunately there was enough room for everyone’s work to be displayed.
After a break for coffee the displays came together; Margaret, who had worked so hard typing up and printing the labels and had them well organised, began to label each piece.

Tables were set up for publicity materials and a shop with hand stitched goodies on sale. There were displays of Boutis, Sashiko, Felting, Needle Darning, Tie Challenge, Pulled Work, Canvas Garden and Chairs’ Challenges  to name but a few. 

By 4:00pm the exhibition was ready for the first day.
Throughout the period of the exhibition members took turns to steward the displays and other brave members demonstrated a range of skills from machine embroidery to felting and hand stitching. 
The response from the public was amazing.
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There were twelve pages of names and comments in our visitors’ book. Here are some of them:
“Wonderful work, an inspiration”
“Loved the displays, what a lot of talent!”
“Fabulous work! An excellent exhibition which we really enjoyed –thank you!” 
“Inspirational exhibition - so much skill - so much variety. WELL DONE”
“Interesting work, well presented, very high standard.”
“Some wonderful gifted people. A super exhibition.”
“Astonishing skill and imagination beautifully displayed.”



As the week went on even more people came in to see the displays. Families and friends were expected to attend and were delighted with the exhibits. There were even visitors from as far afield as The Isle of Man and Australia.
The public donated towards the Vine House charity and raised £50-00.
The shop also did well and £167-75 has now been added to Guild funds.
On Tuesday the committee and members met again to dismantle the display boards. Within a couple of hours the work was down, collated and  packaged back into bags ready for collection.

It was a very successful few days. Thanks to Emma (events manager) and the staff at Barton Grange who also helped to make our exhibition a great success.  

We look forward to welcoming new members, who were inspired by all of the work, at our next meetings. They will be well looked after and hopefully will enjoy the friendship and fun the Preston Embroiderers’ Guild offers.


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