Next Meeting

10:00 am Wednesday 2nd June 

Zoom workshop "Weaving on a Pillow Loom" by Ann Pocklington.

13 Ways of Using Angelina Fibre in Textile Work

The latest meeting of the Grassington Textile Arts Group was a powerpoint presentation followed by a workshop, illustrating the diversity of Angelina Fibres in Textile Art.

Angelina fibres are iridescent ultra-fine synthetic fibres. They reflect and refract light giving a wonderful shimmering effect. When bonded with heat, a web on non-woven fabric is created - a little piece of wispy gossamer material that can be cut, sewn and embellished.

We now have 13 ideas for incorporating the Angelina fibre into our latest projects. The talk explained  how to embellish greeting cards with the fibre, how to produce a fabric used to capture the effervescence character of  waterfalls and sea, and how to create sheets of shimmering background fabric and for use in making buttons and sequins. 

The fibres could be spun, woven, layered and trapped and then embroidered by hand or machine. The applications of Angelina Fibre in Textile Art was certainly impressive.

Embellishing cards by machine embroidering Angelina fabric onto the printed designs.

Iron Angelina fibres over a decorative stamp and hand embroider for lavish and detailed Textile Art pieces.

The iridescent quality of the fibre creates wonderful seascapes.

Couching threads to secure the Angelina fabric to a velvet background.

The shimmering effect of the fabric when enhanced with machine stitch.

Moulding the fabric into iridescent vessels.

Next Meeting Working with Angelina Fibres, Talk and Zoom workshop

The Grassington Textile Arts Group will have an illustrated talk on Wednesday 19th May, explaining how to create Angelina fibre and the many ways it can be incorporated into creative textile work. The PowerPoint presentation will be followed by a Zoom workshop showing how to make a 3D embroidered form embellished with decorative stitch. You will need a bag of Angelina Hot Fix Fibres to participate in the workshop. This can be purchased from a number of online sources.

For those a little less ambitious, find a nice card that lends itself to embellishing with the wonderful iridescent fibre and get your sewing machine ready!

“From Crinoline Ladies to Soldering Irons- a textile journey” by Ann Pocklington

This morning we were all enthralled with Ann Pocklington’s talk “From Crinoline Ladies to Soldering Irons”.

Ann took us on a journey of her life through stitch, and what an exhilarating voyage we had! She shared with us her stunning needlework and thought processes and was an inspiration to us all.

Ann started her life embroidering Crinoline ladies and motifs from transfers provided free in magazines. Illustrated with photographs, she showed her stitching progression to more formal advance textile works, such as her exquisite Richelieu embroidery. Gradually Ann embraced more modern ideas and began to draw her own patterns, producing beautiful, embroidered lichens and algae. By using soluble fabric or fine muslin, she machine or hand embroiders, and applies the work to Derbyshire stone, wood, seed pods and even bracket fungi. After nearly 30 years of teaching biology, much of her work focuses on natural history.

Another major source of her inspiration has been the American south west, its geology and Native American culture.

Ann went on to work in traditional patchworks and embraced more modern techniques including curved piecing. Photographs from her trips abroad were the inspiration for her designs. 

After a career change to copy-editing, she worked for 5 years with a computer networking company and this fostered an interest in digital imaging, which she now uses in the designs for her textile work. 

 The following quote from Clare Hunter’s “Threads Of Life” seems to sum up our experience this morning.

“Sewing is a way to mark our existence on cloth: patterning our place in the world, voicing our identity, sharing something of ourselves with others and leaving the indelible evidence of our presence in stitches held fast by our touch.”

Thank you, Ann, for giving your precious time freely, for sharing with us something of yourself, and inspiring us with so many new stitching opportunities to explore. I know we have all gained so much from your Zoom talk today. I certainly have a list of new avenues to explore and old ones to revisit with fresh ideas.

To see examples of her work, visit Ann's Website.

Welcome to our new blog

This is the blog for the newly-formed Grassington Textile Arts Group. The blog is currently in the advanced development stage. 

There will be lots more details, reports of our meetings, etc. coming soon. In the meantime, here are a few images of our recent work.