As a spin-off from the U3A group in South Bristol, a few of us have started a textiles group, which held a preliminary meeting last month, and our first 'proper' meeting today, at Sally's house. Six of us came, bearing some treasures from our past efforts, some current projects, and lots of ideas for the future.
Sally shared some of her beautiful and very varied quilts, including some exquisite stitching on marbled cotton cloth - I had no idea you could amble onto cloth, but apparently it is pretty much the same process as for paper - the key thing being to whip the cloth out of the floating ink/dye bath extremely quickly. Sally also had some astonishing sculptural forms made of felt, which we all admired and would like to learn more about when the weather improves.
Gaynor is a sock knitter, and we admired her tiny and expert stitching using beautifully soft but fine wool. Celia was also knitting, and brought some complex and weirdly random 3D shapes of different wools and stitches, worked in soft colours based on photos she had taken in the North East of England and used to cover an interestingly shaped box. Rosie had been busy making a canvas cover for the new sailing dinghy which she and Pete have recently acquired. No pictures, but we were all deeply impressed by her ability to design a large and difficulty shaped cover, and make it single-handed on an ordinary sewing machine on the kitchen table. Wendy brought tales of her embroidery work on past courses, and I was doing some stitching to accompany my 'leaving it all behind' project for foundation.
We drank lots of coffee and exchanged bits of life history, in true quilting-bee fashion. And agreed that we would like to exchange skills in future meetings. Lots of possibilities, including felt-making (Sally),
4-needle knitting (Gay and Celia), frame quilting (me), and an offer of a boat trip from Rosie. But we finally agreed that, next month, those who can will teach those of us who can't, to crochet.
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