Mary Sleigh

 In Place opens at Farfield Mill on Saturday July 11th

In Place

July 11th – 31st August 2015

Open daily 10.30 – 17.00

Find out more at www.farfieldmill.org

In Tatters is a triptych all ready to go to Sweden. It just needs to be packed up and that will take so much more time than I ever expect!

Some members of the Textile Study Group are exhibiting with Textil 13 and the exhibition Traces of Life will be at the Art Gallery, Dalarnas Museum, Sweden 13th June – 13th September 2015

In Tatters

In Tatters records and celebrates my uncle’s life and transforms a personal and everyday possession into something precious. Here it is partly open.

Here’s some of the work in the gallery

Exhibition now showing in Hawick

Gallery box – Stones and Bones

Since I last posted a message I have been furiously making work for our new exhibition. We packed everything up last week and drove up to Hawick to deliver the work and install the pieces that are sited in the gardens around the museum. Looking up: looking down is a continuation of my creative conversation with Jan Miller when we showed work along Beach Road in Cley, Norfolk.

Gallery box – fishing flies in a bottle

I can’t quite believe that my 7 gallery boxes are all located up in paper bark birch trees and Jan’s boxes are embedded down in the ground nearby. We just beat the rain and snow! The work in the gallery, In Place responds to the museum collection and the grounds of Wilton Lodge Park and continues our work, similar in some ways and quite different in others.

Folded books containing drawings

The show is on from 4th April – 24th May 2015 at Hawick Museum More information is on the website: www.scotborders.gov.uk/museums

2015 promises to be an exciting and busy year. I am looking forward to exhibiting again with my friend and colleague, Jan Miller, at Hawick  Museum in the Scottish Borders in April/May and at Farfield Mill  in Sedbergh in July/August.

I’m looking forward to teaching again at Burnbrae Studio near Kelso in October. We shall be developing work based on African adornment and experimenting with a range of materials including metals and paper clay. The pin brooch above was inspired by a Zulu blanket pin. For more details of the workshop look at www.burnbraehol.co.uk

Last Autumn  at Burnbrae the workshop was based on ideas from Kanthas. Here are some I bought in Kolkota depicting Indian legends which gave us a starting point.

The students combined kantha quilting with printing and just enjoyed the rhythm of stitching by hand. Just getting started!

I’ve really enjoyed looking at the work of two artists who love drawing and use it in different ways.

Jo Beattie, a textile artist, has been a friend for many years and uses her sewing  machine to draw.

Playground detail

You can see more of her work –  just go to www.jobeattie.com

Beth Hopkins is a young emerging artist who loves drawing and sculpture. Do look at her blog www.bethhopkinsart.blogspot.co.uk

The Mini Maker Faire was packed with enthusiastic visitors of all ages encouraged by a robot roaming around the Faire and streets nearby.

Sue Craig was there again with her band of knitters and stitchers. Huge progress since last year – they’re joining all the bits of the map together  now. Have a look at the website : www.knittingthemap.org

 I loved the workshop area where there was a buzz of activity and people making all sorts of things by recycling materials. Here’s a picture of Cardboard Dream City designed and made by children.

You could buy copies of Hot Glue at a stand in the main hall. It’s full of projects helping you to get started making at home.

Hot Glue on sale here

Good advice from Andrew Sleigh,  Editor of Hot Glue:

‘So wherever you make, make a mess, try things you don’t understand, enjoy your mistakes, and once in a while, step back to enjoy your creations’

Making book structures for embroiderers and textile artists was the theme for the weekend. They were a great bunch of enthusiastic students and here are some of the finished pieces and work in progress …….. never enough time to finish and so many more ideas to try out ……

After some exciting travels in New Zealand it was time to teach at Whanganui at Easter time. They were a friendly, lively bunch of people and once again I worked with a very hard working and imaginative group. We had plenty of time to discuss and share ideas which was a bonus.

It was an opportunity to develop ideas for future work – work in progress.

The workshop was based on the same theme as Ballarat – Constructing a fabric: making connections – but our ideas developed in entirely different ways.

Creating a series:

Traditional pulled work techniques inspired some work.

and a detail……

Others developed ideas inspired by the African connection.

Anne Greville

Life has been very busy making work for the exhibition at Cley and so much time has passed since I was teaching at Ballarat.  I often think of the great time we all had there and see they’ve got an interesting programme on offer for next year.

If you want to get a flavour of the workshop look at Kerrie’s blog  You might be tempted by the recipes! To see what we got up to click on the craft tab and look at her final report for Monday 14th April and scroll down to see images of her work.

Here are some of the class with Mary at the end of the exhibition with some of their work on show.

Constructing a fabric – making connections was the workshop title. Everyone’s work was very individual and their personal connections also interesting. Here are some images of other work in progress.

Sandra Tredwell

Liz Sardone