PROGRAMS 2023 – 2024
| June 2024 | Anne Kelly | Eclectic Ways of Telling Stories. Anne is the author of several books including Textile Nature: Textile techniques and Inspiration from the Natural World. We will hear from her through a recording. |
| May 2024 | Marie-Claude Tremblay | The Bayeaux Tapestry. During our online Chapter meeting Marie-Claude, a guild member, will be presenting her studies of this world famous tapestry taken during a course offered at Simon Fraser University. |
| May 2024 | Vennie Chow | Medicinal Colours. Vennie will be presenting a discussion during our Thursday Stitch-In this month. |
| April 2024 | Tricia Wilson Nguyen | Story Behind the Casket: A Four Season Casket. Tricia has been embroidering since she was a little girl. She comes from a long line of creative women who embroider, quilt or sew. We will hear from her via a YouTube recording. Follow her on her blog here: https://thistle-threads.blogspot.com/ |
| March 2024 | Thomas Roach | “Spiritual Stitched Stories” – Thomas taught himself to sew at age six because he couldn’t draw. Many years later he is still stitching, dyeing and using cloth as a medium to explore spiritual themes and community stories. You can find out more about his creative process and various projects at his website http://www.thomasroach.ca His latest exhibit “The Craft of Spirit” is now showing until March 31, 2024. More information can be found here: https://www.italianculturalcentre.ca/current-exhibition |
| February 2024 | Dorie Wilkie | The Great Scottish Tapestry – Dorie will discuss the development and creation of this well known tapestry to continue our study of stitched stories. More information can be found here: https://www.greattapestryofscotland.com/the-stitchers/ |
| January 2024 | Sandra Sawatsky | The Black Gold Tapestry – Sandra will talk about the inspiration and process of creating a tapestry depicting the saga of oil and energy transition. Various sections of the 67 meter tapestry will be included in her presentation. More information can be found here: https://www.theblackgoldtapestry.com/ |
PROGRAMS 2022-2023
| 2022 Sep 15 | Marie-Renee Otis | Retrospective of Works. Embroideries of magical women, subjects of nature, stitch abstractions, pure exploration of the material. Works use fibres and textiles from different countries blended with goldwork material, beads, jewellery and elements of nature. Many traditional techniques are used to create contemporary works. |
| Oct 20 | Claudia Kistler | Perforated Paper Needlework. See the creativity of counted thread pieces worked on specific “fabric” that was once very popular but is almost forgotten today. Between 1840 and 1900 a popular needlework pastime for both children and adults was stitching on perforated paper. In this lecture you will see an overview of the history and different types of perforated paper needlework. |
| Nov 10 | Garage Sale | |
| Nov 17 | AGM | |
| Dec 8 | Christmas Celebration – Potluck lunch | |
| Dec 15 | Chapter Meeting | |
| 2023 Jan 19 | Sue Stone | “Woman without a fish” Sue Stone is a UK based textile artist who is best known for textural, figurative compositions that often feature a fish. “A short introduction to myself and my narrative work including the techniques I use and where I find my inspiration. An in depth look at pieces in my Imagined Journeys series including how I combine images to convey ideas and the stories behind some of the individual pieces. |
| 2023 Feb 16 | Ruth Singer | “Criminal Quilts” is an art & heritage project inspired by photographs and documents relating to women held in Stafford Prison 1877-1916, created and developed by Ruth Singer in partnership with Staffordshire Record Office. |
| 2023 Mar 16 | Irma Frijlink | “The history of women in the last century.” |
| 2023 Apr 13 | Nell Burns | Nell Burns is an award-winning contemporary textile artist, who specializes in free form machine embroidery. She essentially draws and paints with thread, using the needle as a pencil, and the fabric as a canvas. Her artwork contains sculptural elements, using fabrics and stabilizers to create 3D art. For more info click. |
PROGRAMS 2021-2022
| Date | Program/Speaker | Topic |
| Sept | Pamela Robertson | Museum of North Vancouver Tour – Virtual Tour of MONVA: Our Fall season starts on September 9 with a virtual tour of the new Museum of North Vancouver, scheduled to open in late 2021. Located in the Shipyards District at 115 West Esplanade, North Vancouver, MONOVA is a brand new 16,000 sq.ft. facility where they plan to ignite curious minds through powerful stories of North Vancouver. |
| Oct | Jill Taylor | Metal Thread Embroidery, from Ancient to ModernEveryone has always loved bling! In her presentation ‘Metal Thread Embroidery, from ancient to modern’ Jill Taylor takes us from 330BC to today’s catwalks. We shall discover Anglo Saxon goldwork and Medieval ‘Opus Anglicanum’ masterpieces. Metal thread traditions from the Middle East to the Far East are explored and we shall see how Royal weddings, contemporary embroiderers and today’s fashion houses have kept the skills alive. |
| Nov | Caroline Nixon | Eco-Print and Stitch. Caroline is a textile artist. She works with natural dyes and botanical contact printing ( ecoprinting), which is a contemporary adaptation of the ancient art of dyeing with plant based pigments. Using this technique she makes wearable art, books, wall art and home textiles, capturing the beauty of nature using the pigments and imprints of the leaves themselves – no synthetic ink, dyes or silk screens are involved. Hand and free machine stitch are used for embellishment, producing complex patterned cloth. The naturally occurring colours are soft and harmonious, and the process is non polluting and respectful of the environment. Despite the natural processes used, the textiles are colourfast and washable. [Source: Westoxarts.com] To be followed by AGM. |
| Dec | Edwina Mackinnon | Colour Stories Colouring fabrics is Edwina’s passion and she will share with us the many ways she dyes, prints and creates many special effects on cloth.
To be followed by Charm Challenge presentations. |
| Jan | Amanda Cobbett | Embroidered Sculptures Amanda is a textile artist who explores 3-dimensional, papier-mâché and machine-embroidered sculptures. During her daily dog walk Amanda scours the understorey of the forest floor seeking its hidden treasures, photographing and collecting fallen debris. Over time, she has honed an inherent ability to locate intriguing flora in the most unexpected of places. Back at the studio, she ‘draws’ with the sewing machine needle into a dissolvable fabric, and by building up layers of thread creates a new fabric that she moulds into textile copies of the natural world. |
| Feb | Richard Box | Drawing for the Terrified Are you terrified of drawing but secretly long to learn how? Richard Box has an approach that will steady your nerves and build drawing ability and confidence. You will be amazed at what you will be able to draw by following his method. Richard is the author of a number of books on drawing and design. Above all, the course is to be considered as your first step towards a lifetime’s adventure discovering the nature of colour and tone; as John Ruskin said, ‘I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than to teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw’. |
| Mar | Catherine Nicholls | Designing the Canadian Embroidery Tapestry The Canadian Embroidery Tapestry was first conceived by Embroidery Canada in May of 2014 as a way to acknowledge Canada’s 150th birthday ion 2017. Helen McCrindle, the tireless facilitator and project lead gave Catherine Nicholls the great privilege of designing the tapestry. It was a unique (and mind bending!!) challenge to capture all of Canada in a design that could be stitched by the Embroidery Canada members from coast to coast to coast.
This presentation will give a little peek behind the scenes to the design process- some of the ideas that worked and a few that didn’t! Catherine will talk about the significance of each and every part of the design and how she attempted to capture the feel, humour and joy of our 9.9 million kilometre square country in 2 stitched panels totalling a little over a meter square. |
| Apr | Chapter Meeting with Show and Tell | |
| May | Chapter Meeting with Show and Tell | |
| Jun | Chapter Meeting with Show and Tell | |
| Date | Program/Speaker | Topic |
| October | Janey Chang | Gifts from the Salmon: Reviving an Ancestral Skill – The making of salmon skin leather is an almost forgotten ancient skill that many coastal and river communities in the Northern Hemisphere once practiced. Janey Chang is a Fish Skin Leather Revivalist and Ancestral Skills Artist exploring the old ways of living as a means to connect with her Chinese ancestral lineage. She will share some of the ways that fish leather was used around the world, as well as some of her own personal projects, and will also demonstrate some of the steps of the process of fish skin leather tanning. |
| November | AGM | Show and Tell followed business meeting |
| December | Christmas | Flight Charm Challenge |
| January | Susan Purney-Mark | On her Artist in residence in Iceland |
| February | Debbie Lyddon | Inspired by natural phenomena – air, wind, water, light and sound – in the environment. |
| March | Catherine Nicholls | Photographing your work |
| April | Monique Choptuik | A Closer Look at the Embroidery on Game of Thrones Costumes — If you love beaded embroidery, stump work, ribbon embroidery and heraldic embroidery you won’t want to miss this! |
| May | Marie-Claude Tremblay | The Kimono Project, 2020 Summer Olympics — The Kimono Project, launched in 2014, was initiated by the Imagine One World organization when Japan was awarded the 2020 Summer Olympic & Paralympic Games. The project, led by Yoshimasa Takakura, president of Choya and 3rd generation Kimono maker, commissioned the making 213 kimono and obi representing all of the countries participating in the games. All of the kimono and obi were made by Japanese designers except for 2. The obi for the Palestinial kimono was created by refugees using embroidery as their primary technique. The kimono designed for Indonesia was made using batik techniques. (from Wikipedia) |
| June | Anne Brooke | For the love of Stitch – Anne’s talk will reveal the story of her inspiration through to the realization of stitched collage and other work. The talk covers a brief history of her journey, but mainly focuses on 2021 to present day and the development of #sew4thesoul during the year and how she became more obsessed with stitch. The talk reflects the background to her work focusing on the development of workbooks and sketchbooks. |