Branch Meeting Saturday - 8th January 2011

Hello everyone

I throughly enjoyed Saturday - I hadn't realised how much I had missed seeing people at the beginning of the festive season - we had to cancel the December meeting owing to bad weather conditions and somehow the celebratory nature of that meeting almost acts as a harbinger (is that the right word?) of Christmas and we had to wait an extra week for this meeting as New Years Day fell on our normal meeting day.

However we all gathered and another year begins with a very busy meeting - I loved it - plenty to see and plenty of people to talk to and plenty of good creative stitching going on.

In the morning we had the Baltimore Quilt Stitch Club (more of that on the dedicated page) and the normal social stitching and talking group.
 
After lunch the room was prepared and the main event began:- there was a relatively quick business meeting - the main notices were as follows.

                 Workshop        Minature Paper Shoes with Serena Partridge
                                           Saturday 12th February at Hartrigg Oaks

                 Workshop        Tracy Day  with Tracy Franklin
                                            Saturday 26th March at (I'll get back to you on that one!)

Members were asked for volunteers to demonstrate at The Quilt Museum on Saturday 29th January morning and afternoon.  Sessions are 10.30 - 1.00 and 1.00 -3.30  It is Viv who is trying to organise this and I think she has a space at the morning session - if you can help could you please e-mail/phone Viv Stamford - those people who have volunteered she needs to know what you are going to demonstrate for the Quilt Museums' publicity.

Bead group will meet as usual - second Wednesday of every month 1.30-6.00ish and that will be this Wednesday.  Numbers are getting a little low and the group may have to fold so if you would enjoy beading with like minded people then come along - non members would be welcome also.

Jean Graves asked that members who had taken Baltimore squares to return them completed for the March meeting ( that annoucement stirred me into activity!!!!) - she would like the quilt to be completed by Summer 2011.

Terry Murphy, the acting CEO of The Embroiderers' Guild is going to have meeting for our Region in Scarcroft Village Hall  (on the A58 between Wetherby and Leeds) on Saturday   from 2pm -4pm.   ALL WELCOME

The Guild HQ is moving from Hampton Court to Walton -on-Thames  - more information on their website.

At the November meeting we brought the scarves we had been knitting for Cancer Research - Judith Johnson, who was the lady who encouraged us to support this very worthy cause, reported that she had taken 51 scarves from our guild and she updated us with the information that the scarves were selling very well and they had raised over £4000 to date.
So thank you one and all who either knitted or bought or both - it's always good to start the year with good news.

Our speaker on Saturday was Michelle Horton who works in the Harrogate branch of Duttons for Buttons.  Now I imagine that everybody who was in that room has been to Duttons on many occasions and will have had the same experience as myself and that is that you are rarely disapointed and unable to find a button or habedashery suitable to the task in hand - Duttons for Buttons is one of the most useful shops in the area.
But this talk was an historical look at the humble button and it turned out to be not humble at all but a mark of staus through the ages.  The talk covered buttons (no pun intended) up until the 18th century - they started as decorative items and evolved into functional items and over the centuries have been made from a whole host of materials.   I am always pleased when I learn something new from a talk and I am pleased to report that I learned lots of interesting facts from this one and I hope that the second part of the talk - 19th century to the present day - will turn up on our programme in the future.




Anne looks a little surprised here - I think she should look very proud of her work



The rear view!   we had to guess how many buttons are on the whole outfit.

Anne moved a bit too quick for my camera here but I like the movement

In honour of the subject matter of this meeting one of our members Anne B-Z who originated in London and is very proud of her London heritage brought along her Pearly Queen outfit which is a work in progress.    We ran a small competition to guess the number of buttons on the outfit for fun.

The winner of the competition was Diana Barrett who guessed 1987 and the actual number is 1940.
As you can see there is space for more buttons and Anne has said it is a work in progress so perhaps by the time of the Buttons talk Part 2 she may have added more and we can have another look at it.