Well we certainly started the New Year as we mean to go on with a fantastic workshop in very early January from our very own Alchemist, Anne Hellyer. On a freezing winter morning, we gathered in the toasty Kimpton Village Hall where Anne delighted us by sharing the many beautiful books she has made over…
We’d like to wish a very Merry Christmas to all our followers old and new and to the lovely visitors who came to our exhibition at the Whitchurch Silk Mill. We’ve had a wonderfully productive year. Our monthly meetings have helped keep our creativity flowing and we finished 2024 with a lovely Christmas meal and…
There’s still plenty of time and plenty to see in the last few weeks of our exhibition at the Whitchurch Silk Mill. As a group, we enjoy devising projects that encourage us to explore different techniques and approaches but which bring us together with a common theme. One such project is our ‘Earth Tones’ collection,…
October has been a very busy time for the Alchemist’s Needle – grab a coffee and read on to find out what we’ve been up to. The ongoing exhibition at the Whitchurch Silk Mill has proven to be extremely well received with lovely comments written in the visitors’ book. Our latest Jane Austen ‘stamp collection’…
Part 2 Following the wonderful response by visitors to our small Jane Austen project for the Passionate Women exhibition, we were asked by Whitchurch Silk Mill to create a second set of embroidered stamp pieces. These would form part of a display to launch their beautiful Jane Austen ribbons woven on site. Heritage silk weaving…
by Sarah Maddison My second ‘Passionate Woman’ for the exhibition is the amazing Elizabeth Shrewsbury, perhaps better known as Bess of Hardwick. She was a most remarkable women who became the richest woman in England during the Tudor reign. There is no doubt that she married well – four times in all – but her…
Tea at the Silk Mill by Janice Ballard Clarice Cliff is regarded as one of the most influential ceramics artists of the 20th Century. She started work at ‘The Potteries’ in 1912 aged 13. By the age of 28 she had her own studio and launched her renowned ‘Bizarre’ Art Deco pattern. Her factory continued to produce her unique pottery shapes and colours until 1964. This piece is inspired…
Fashion Changes but Style Endures by Mandy Dunning Coco Chanel led an eventful life. She started out as a seamstress, a singer and a rich man’s play thing which led to a career making hats and then clothes for French high society. She inhabited two worlds – the world of society and the one of…
Headscarf Revolutionaries by Sarah Davis In the winter of 1968, 58 men and three Hull trawlers were lost at sea. Lillian Bilocca, wife, mother and daughter of trawlermen had had enough. Along with Yvonne Blenkinsop, Mary Denness and Christine Smallbone, she mobilised the women of Hessle Road to campaign for improvements to safety regulations in…
by Alison Young My inspiration for Hidden Figures is the story of the African-American women who worked as ‘Human Computers’ from1935 for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a precursor to NASA. They were segregated from the white workers and this did not change until 1958. The black on black equations, on the left, represents the way the African-American…
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First Workshop of the Year
Alchemist’s Needle member, Sarah Maddison, has been making beautiful embroidered purses for a while now and she sells them in her Etsy shop. We were delighted when she said she would show us how it was done. It was a workshop of two halves. First we created the stitched design directly onto the felt, which was slightly daunting as it was done completely freehand. Then came the assembling which required concentration and lots of direction from Sarah. The results are unique little purses, perfect for presents.
The Alchemist's Needle 