June Meeting - Jessica Grady

Our speaker this month was Jessica Grady. She is a talented Embroidery artist and designer, but is known to many of us as a York branch member and leader of our Young Embroiderers' Group.

image taken from Jess's website

It was a delight to see her work and how she is carving out a career in textiles since graduating from Norwich University of the Arts in 2014.

Jess's work could be summed up in a single word as 'Colourful'. She creates wonderfully textured surfaces incorporating many recycled objects - elastic band, cotton buds, coffee pods (especially the pink ones). Plastic straws are welded together then stamped out to create sequins.

Stamped out straws

There appears to be very little that cannot feature in her work somewhere.

Bag ties

Her inspiration is the surface texture found in nature - bark, barnacles and coral have all provided her with a rich design source.

 Jess talked us through her years at university, showing sketchbooks she created then, and how this work is still being used today to create repeat patterns for printed fabrics. She talked about work placements where she created designs for sale, and mentioned some of the pitfalls along the way as well as her successes.

Image from Jess's website

One of her successes this year is being selected as the Under 30's Embroiderers' Guild Scholar, which means her work will be on show at all the Knitting and Stitching shows this Autumn. Separately she has been invited to exhibit at this year's Festival of Quilts as a guest exhibitor with the Art Textiles: Made in Britain group.
It was a really interesting talk about starting up a career in Embroidery and as a branch we all wish her every success.

In other things . . .

Our branch exhibition runs from Friday 22nd June to Sunday 24th June at the Tithe Barn, Nether Poppleton, York. See the exhibition page for more details.

This is a reminder that the July meeting will be at Huntington Community Centre. It will be our 'Celebration of Stitch' day and will be open to the public. Bring something to work on. Note that the meeting will be from 10:00am to 1:00pm only.

Volunteers are still needed to stand for committee positions in October at the AGM.