October saw the return of Liz Almond, who came to talk to us about taking embroidery into quilting, and how to learn from her mistakes! She also introduced us to the “doodle cloth” – a spare piece of fabric for practising stitches – which can become a pieve of art in its own right. Liz showed us several pieces of quilted embroidery, and followed the meeting with a workshop the next day.

The speaker for the first session of the new season was Nicky Brunger, a former modren languages teacher who told us how retiring prompted a change direction, and started her new business creating and sellnig cross-stictch patterns and kits. She then moved on to talk about her degree at the Bradford School of Art, were she explored various aspects of textile art, including exhibiting in the Saltaire Arts Trail. Nicky brought along several of her pieces for us to view.

In July, we welcomed Nicola Harper, a York-based textile artist who specialises in machine embroidered landscapes. Nicola draws her inspiration from local architecture, the Yorkshire coast, Dales and Moors. She took us through her creative process of preparing cotton calico, on which she paints a base using acrylic paints, finally embellishing with fabric scraps and machine embroidery to produce fine art

Our speaker for June was Susie Hart. Susie was the chair of two charities and had visited Mexico to learn a different technique for making paper and developed an interest in the colourful textiles produced in Mexico, in Peru and Ecuador. The social enterprise charities aimed to support local people with disabilities to develop skills and obtain jobs. In the ten years she had worked with the local people the charities had employed 120 people. Her talk involved various slides showing the processes for weaving the items, and many slides showing the colourful results. It was planned to organise trips to Peru in the future.