September meeting - Ruth Brown

The Speaker at this month's meeting was Ruth Brown of Stone Creek Textiles.
Ruth's talk was illustrated with examples of the textile techniques she has explored since she moved away from working in IT.
She was first captivated by the effects that could be achieved by painting and manipulating dyes on silk (her business used to be called Stone Creek Silks but she has branched out since then). She moved on to working with Indigo and shibori, then blue prints, or cyanotypes, on fabrics.

'Ivy' One of Ruth's cyanotypes

She researched the subject thoroughly and discovered that there was very little written on the technique aimed specifically at textile artists, so she wrote the book! That was then followed by a book on Digital Imagery on Fabrics, drawing on her years of experience in IT.
Ruth then talked about Stone Creek itself - an open wilderness at the edge of the Humber estuary - and how she has a barn which has been converted into a workshop space where she teaches many of her techniques.
Ruth had also brought along examples of her work and it was lovely to be able to see these techniques at close hand.

Other things...
The theme for the Christmas Competition has been announced as 'Round Robin'. This can be interpreted in many ways and I believe there are prizes!

Moira was awarded the Ida Barber trophy this year. The judging of the badge competition to make a name badge incorporating a City of York EG badge (see the July post for more details) has been held over until next month - so there's still time to make a competition entry.

The Regional AGM is on the 11th October. Further contributions for the secret stitching project to be unveiled at the AGM were requested - bring them to the branch meeting/AGM on the 4th October.

The New Programme for 2014 - 15

Perhaps there should be a drum roll at this point.....The Programme of Speakers and members' days for 2014-15 had been unveiled and is now available by clicking on the tab above.