Category: News

We were given a geography lesson when Jill Salmons presented a slide show of the places she’d visited in South West China – many pictures of the varying landscapes and more of the wonderfully embroidered costumes the people wore. During her visits she has acquired a large collection of costumes which she brought with her and they were passed around for us to admire.

At our meeting on May 18^th Jane Thomas talked about the embroidered cards which were sent between soldiers and their loved ones during the war. Although the cards were originally hand embroidered a lot were actually mass produced on a Schiffli Embroidery Machine. The embroidered pieces would be attached to an embossed card which acted as a frame.

At our meeting on May 4^th we had a very interesting talk from our speaker Jackie Dymock (an ex police officer) who used quilts as props for her talk about her life in the police force. Each tale was illustrated with a mini quilt which was then added to the hanging.

We also had a display of our Easter Challenge Table Runners – some members had been hard at work. Images of other Challenge items in “Members only” section.

At our sit & sew we had a visit from Rachel Buchanan who spent the evening chatting to members of the group to get their opinions. She is the Programme Development Manager for the Cultural Consortium in Leominster – see their temporary webpage here https://leominsterfestival.org/leominster-roars/. They are surveying residents in Leominster about what they think of Leominster and what cultural activities they do, in order to plan some cultural activities over the next couple of years as part of the Historic England project. They want to make sure they meet a wide range of people from the whole community so they thought our group would be great to talk to, particularly if we might be interested in joining in with some creative projects in the next couple of years.

We started the new year on 8^th January with our “Sew Saturday”. It was a pleasant day. 12 members turned up (bringing their own packed lunches). It was lovely to do something normal, but we missed Pat’s soup.

19^th January 2022 – at our first Wednesday meeting of the year we had a sit and sew and part 1 of our “Easter Challenge” was handed out.

2^nd February 2022 – we had a talk from Zoe Acketts of Paint-Box Threads at Bircher with 25-30 in attendance. Zoe was full of enthusiasm for dyeing and weaving. She gave an interesting insight into weaving and setting up her thread dyeing business.

16^th February 2022 – the AGM was followed by a mini workshop to make name badges that can be worn to meetings to help everyone get to know each other. Part 2 of our “Easter Challenge” was handed out.

2^nd March 2022 – should have been Karen Perry talking to us about Fiddle Quilts (memory quilts for those suffering from dementia). Unfortunately she had to cancel at the last minute so we had a sit, sew and chat evening.