Packed Embroiderers' Meeting

Despite the glorious weather outside on Thursday, the hall was full and buzzing when one of our own members, Judy Fairless, gave her talk on "Digital Imagery for Quilts".

Most of our 100+ members have access to a computer and will happily check their daily emails, wouldn't bat an eyelid when they search and fill shopping trolleys with fabric and threads over the internet, and many are completely unfazed doing a video-conference with grand-children who live miles away.

But start talking about "Computer Design", "Image Manipulation" and "Scanning" and more than a few would turn away, muttering "far too difficult and technical, for me".

However, Judy is an accomplished tutor and with her encouraging opening statement of "you don't need to know what's under the bonnet to drive a car", she grabbed hold of a lot of hands and gently led us on a journey through the menus, selections and processes she uses in her favourite software package.

ColourfulAnd what an exciting, colourful journey it was! The easily understood presentation showed us how to create motifs from personal photos, spectacularly change an image using special effects, combine various selections to create a design, quickly try out a different colourways, how to get the image onto fabric ready for stitching and many more ideas.

Judy was adamant that the computer is not a replacement, but just another tool to be used when appropriate, and she certainly hasn't abandoned traditional materials as was clearly shown in the many sketchbooks she'd bought along for us to look at.

She regularly works into computer prints with paints and crayons, which are then scanned back into the computer for further development before being printed onto fabric and she still loves to use the paper-cutting techniques, we all did as children.

ContemporaryJudy is a member of the Contemporary Quilt Group within the Quilters Guild and some of her Journal Quilts have been published and shown nationally. Again, many of these were on display for us to look at, at the end of the talk, not just to admire but also to see if we could work out which "button" she'd clicked on when creating the design.

It was an inspiring morning and if the weather suddenly turns to rain, you can probably blame the embroiderers', as many of us will now be wishing for bad weather so we can sit in front of our computers without feeling guilty!

CelebrationThere was a lovely moment of celebration early in the morning when Pat Matthews was presented with her "25 Years" Embroiderers' Guild badge by two of our founding members, Maggie Phillips and Anne Pearce.

Our next meeting, on 19th May 2011, is "Don't Count the Calories" with Greta Fitchett. Please check out our website for more photos and information – click on the link below the photos.

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