Mary Sleigh

At the beginning of July I had a wonderful few days at Urchfont Manor College tutoring a group of distance learning students, who are all studying  courses through Distant Stitch. It seems a long way off and such a lot has happened since then.
Urchfont Manor is a lovely peaceful venue very conducive to learning and sharing ideas. We were well looked after – almost too well!
The students in my group came from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Italy and all parts of UK. This was an opportunity for them to meet their fellow students face to face, have tutorials with Sian Martin and take part in workshops with two invited tutors.
We were studying African textiles and bead work from my personal collection. The aim was and to use ideas sparked off by seeing and handling authentic pieces to develop personal ideas.

Each time I use pieces from my collection with students I learn more about them  myself and new discoveries are made. I often think of a comment I read by Victoria Mitchell. Textile is a hugely significant form of cultural knowledge in its own right, and one that is considerably older than writing.

Here are two of the initial ideas at the early stages. Everyone had great ideas and so I hope to show more of them in the next post.

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland. It takes place annually during the first week in December in a stadium in Kisama and celebrates the vibrant culture of some of the many diverse tribal groups; 16 in Nagaland and more than 25 in Arunachal Pradesh.We arrived in Kisema and stayed with a family having negotiated a very precipitous road, so not for the faint-hearted! We had planned to spend several days in the area as there is so much to see and arrived early in the cool of the morning to see the beginning of the day’s programme at the festival.
It featured a succession of tribal groups performing their traditional dances, music and songs. It was a spectacular day of colour, costumes, jewellery and music all in a beautiful mountain setting. This remote region is sometimes called Nagaland: Song of the Misty Mountains and it does have a mystical quality as you can see from the image taken from our home stay balcony.

After watching some of the performances there was an opportunity to mingle with the crowds of people in their traditional costumes and visit their displays of textiles and crafts.
This was a perfect opportunity to buy some examples of weaving and have them packed up and posted back to England – another parcel to open on our return. Let me know if you would like to see more of the performances at the festival.

Next time I can start to show you some of the textiles from Nagaland and also tell you about the wonderful time I had as a tutor at  Urchfont Manor.

The Textile Study Group have launched a brand new website. Have a look at it and read all about us.

I’ve had a wonderful time recently, first in Durham and then Scotland at Burnbrae in the Borders near Kelso. I was tutoring a two day workshop at the studio at Burnbrae and this time we were working from African sources. The students were very hard working and such fun to teach. It’s a beautiful area near Kelso and so relaxing to say nothing of the welcome and comfort!

It’s good to be back home at my desk and work room after teaching an enthusiastic group in Bristol.

I’m longing to get on with my work that has been simmering away for a while. I’ll be giving you a glimpse of more textiles from the parcel very soon.

After Lucknow and Kolkata we went to N E India to visit the Hill tribes. The Mising people live in Eastern Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and the women are expert weavers and were busy at their looms when they could be spared from harvesting the rice.  The colours are stunning and patterns are traditional ones from the region. This is a Mising cotton gale or wrap and shows some of the  pattern at one end. I’ll show you some more examples next time.

I’ve just been too busy to unpack  for a while. I’ve been working with some quilting groups who all seem to be very industrious and produce a lot of work! At the weekend I am one of the tutors at The N E Embroiderers’ Guild Spring Course so have some preparation to do.

I have given my old hand Singer sewing machine to my son who is very innovative and uses a machine in some of his making ideas.  When I saw his photos on flickr it made me realise how beautiful those old machines are. Have a look.

I’ve always wanted to own an example of kantha work as inspiration for workshops and just to enjoy. We found She, a self help enterprise which trains women in rural areas and sells their kantha embroideries in Kolkata. Of course, I fell in love with their textiles and bought two examples. Here is a detail of one of them, worked on silk.

Click on the image to see a much larger version.

I am now back from South Africa after 4 weeks away. It was a  great family holiday but it’s good to be back and am itching to get started with some new work. First I’ve been preparing for our Textile Study Group weekend. We have the great treat of having Audrey Walker as our tutor and it’s my turn to have a review with Polly Binns who is our mentor. So I’ll soon do some more unpacking!

It was exciting to open the parcel even though I had watched Mr Singh pack it up. We started our journey with a return visit to Lucknow where we went back to see Mamta Varma and the young women who do wonderful chikankari – the most exquisite hand embroidery.  Here’s a detail of the embroidery worked on silk.

This is the best parcel ever. I sent it from the GPO Kolkata and it arrived in 10 days. It was hand stitched and arrived in perfect condition with all sorts of good things from India. You’ll be hearing about them during the next few weeks.