April Notices

Embroiderer’s Guild Birmingham Branch Notices April 2016

Welcome to tonight’s meeting please; sit back and enjoy hearing from Kathleen Laurel Sage. If anyone is joining us for the first time tonight we hope you have a lovely evening and please don’t be shy to ask anyone here if you have any questions. Existing members please keep wearing your badges.

Several of us were able to make the Library session last Saturday, first Saturday in the month. Another reminder that it is a great way to relax, chat with other members and take time out to enjoy some stitching and helps new and longstanding members get to know each other. We would love to welcome members who haven’t yet been. The beauty is that you don’t have to commit to every month just occasionally if that suits you, so don’t forget to join us if you can on the first Saturday in April. The theme for national stitch day regionally is Landscape and Garden with a drop in project of leaves and this will also be happening at the Library on the first Saturday in August. Margaret is going to stitch a large tree and we will invite people on the day to stitch a leaf and add it to the tree we can also use it in subsequent visits and then display it when we visit the library.

We may also use it at CoCoMAD which many of you know is a festival in Cotteridge Park this year being held on Saturday 2nd July. We have a stall there and will be asking for volunteers to help staff it, look out for a rota at the next meeting. It is a lovely day out and we hope to work alongside the weavers and spinners.

Clare continues to be our link person for the Capability Brown Project. As you know our branch’s exhibition time at Charlecote will start on 10th August and go on till 31st October. Five members of our branch are invited to a private viewing of Leamington Branch Exhibition on 26^th May at 6.30pm. If you are interested in being one of the 5 see Clare, there is a leaflet on the side with information about this. Please think about making a piece for our branch. I am told that you shouldn’t feel intimidated. We will be having a viewing of our exhibition on 15^th September so please put that date in your diary.

If you would like to car share for meetings don’t forget to look at Meriel’s map and contact people near to you.

Regional Day 18^th June. Put the date in your diary please if you can. We already have people signed up to help, please add your names to the list if you possibly can. We will also need more cakes made for the day. The tradition is to finish the day with homemade cakes. It helps it end on a lovely friendly note. If you can make a cake or cakes that are easily sliced and served please add your name to the separate cake making list on the side with an estimate of the number of slices it could provide. Thank you all so much for helping so far and thank you to everyone who made tags. Some of us had a lovely morning finishing the tags at Meriel’s with great cake from Bev which augurs well for the Regional Day! We have made over 170 tags so well done everyone especially Meriel. I also should say that having heard from the planning group last week there really is an amazing day being put together, the gift bags are brilliant. The planning group are doing a great job.

Urgent: We have also asked that each branch bring a piece measuring 30 cm square representing their branch and area to be shared on the day. We need to produce something ourselves and are looking for volunteers, our idea was to have 3 or 4 people and divide the piece into 3 strips or four squares, ideally using some different techniques. If you can help please see Clare Meriel or Bernadette tonight and we will organise this ASAP. We will need it for early May. Sorry for the rush. If we don’t get volunteers be warned we may be approaching individuals to ask if they can help.

Another group working hard is the planning group for next year’s programme. Again this is shaping up to be excellent ( we may have a speaker from the Royal Ballet!) don’t forget Day Schools and sign up with Margaret if you fancy Cas Holmes on 19^th June the day after she has spoken at the regional day, also don’t forget Nicola Jarvis on 8^th October.

Two members of our branch have activities coming up. Tina Francis has a tapestry needlepoint exhibition on 4th May - 29th July, Wednesdays to Sundays 11-3pm (free) at The Coffin Works 13-15 Fleet Street Birmingham B1 1JP. Angela Atwood is teaching a regular beginners free-motion embroidery workshop in Shirley, with dates every month. The next ones being May 9th & June 4^th. Information about these will also be on the blog and if any other branch members have exhibitions or events they would like to tell members about please email me at least a week before the branch meeting and if I can I will include in the notices.

Please keep bringing in items for sale at the meetings things like kits that you have made (at a discount to members), finished pieces of work you would like to sell again at a discount if sold elsewhere as well, and items made by you that are being sold on behalf of recognised charities.

Fashion Embroidery and Stitch NEC 17^th to 20^th March. The stand attracted a lot of attention leaflets were given out and lots of people joined in our stitching activites. We provided a number of volunteers to help out at the stand so thank you.

Thank you as well for your continuing support for the raffle. May’s colour is Blue

Don’t forget to get stitching for upcoming competitions in particular ‘Within a thousand steps of your home” for the regional day and ‘colour carnival’ for our summer party. Our next meeting is a members meeting we will allow a short time for travelling books groups to get together and sort out any issues. We will also do some organising of the volunteers for the Regional Day and get started for CoCoMAD. Margaret will be demonstrating the making of the silk paper that she is putting together for the Regional Day from the Library Silks (for those of you who remember them they have proved too difficult to use reliably for stitch so this seemed a perfect way of making good use of them). Please if you would like also bring with you your own stitching and we can all have a chance to chat and see each other’s work in progress.

Bernadette Wilkinson on behalf of the committee.