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Newbury Branch is exhibiting work at the National Needlework Archive, the Old Chapel, Greenham, between October 10th and November 4th this year.

Exhibits will include Celebration of Capability Browns' work and our Divine Inspiration wall hangings.

We displayed a selection of our work along side that of the Market Square Quilters last weekend. It was a busy, sucessful show with lots of interesting exhibits on display. Our branch contributed many great examples of Day School work and our Divine Inspiration wall hangings.

The SEW Region AGM was held at St George's Hall Newbury on Saturday 15th Oct in conjunction with our branch 40th Anniversary celebration. The event was very well attended and we spent a lovely day browsing through tables of fabrics, threads and craft supplies brought along by our invited traders; chatting with friends and tucking into coffee and a wide variety of cakes!

Jan Beaney was our guest speaker. She enthralled us all with images of her work and the details of how pieces developed from sketches made in the variety of places visited.

Newbury Embroiderers' Guild in conjunction with the West Berkshire Museum is proud to announce a forthcoming exhibition of work. "Stitched Reflections" is an exhibition of the Guild's work inspired by the Kennet and Avon Canal and marks too the 40th anniversary of the Newbury branch of the Embroiderers' Guild.

The exhibition runs from Wednesday 29th June to Sunday 25th September 2016. The Newbury Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm and entry is free.

This week a new exhibition opens at Blenheim Palace to celebrate the work of Capability Brown. 

Members of our branch have joined with other Embroiderers' Guild branches in the area to contribute to this 300th Anniversary Celebration. There are a large number of pieces on show, displaying a wide variety of textile techniques.

Throughout the year other branches of the Guild will be exhibiting in many different venues around the country.

We have an exhibition of our members' work at the National Needlework Archive, Greenham Newbury. It is entitled 'Inspired To Stitch". The exhibition runs from Tuesday 10th November and ends on Saturday 5th December.

Many of our members went on a visit to Blenheim Palace last week and enjoyed a day photographing and sketching the park and gardens. We hope to use these ideas to create our next piece of work clebrating the work of Capability Brown.

Valentina Tilhanova enthralled us all with her talk on 'My Way To Stitches'. Her personal story about life in the Ukraine and Russia before coming to live in England was fascinating to listen to. She explained the development of her intricate work having spent time at Central St Martins, Royal School of Needlework and Lasage in Paris. She is now part way through a degree at Loughbough University.

The photograph shows a piece of Valentina's beautiful beadwork.

Everyone had a great day yesterday with tutor Debbie Lyddon. This inspirational textile artist engengered a wealth of ideas to help us produce wonderful painted papers, drawn thread work and provided us with still life objects to produce a small piece of stitched collage. An excellent rewarding dayschool.

Fourteen members enjoyed a whole day of experimenting new techniques with Vilene Spunbond. Our humourous tutor Kim Thittichai promotes a safe approach when using various heat tools to heat distress the products we were using. A great day.

A very sucessful day with Karen Head taking felting to another level. The group each completed a silk chiffon scarf using hand-dyed wool tops onto silk chiffon achieving some lovely effects.

A fantastic day tutored by Lynda Monk experimenting with different media including thermofax screens, achieving some really interesting effects.

Our Christmas party meeting proved a great success as we all set about making jewellery from safety pins and beads. It posed a challenge to finish a necklace before the end of the evening but we all achieved this goal. The activity was fun and very creative, everyone enjoyed this sociable evening. 

Members enjoyed a social evening together in the Watermill Theatre Restaurant at the end of June 2014. This marked the end of another successful exhibition of 15 individual pieces of "Canal Embroideries".

Linda Rudkin gave a group of us an excellent workshop, teaching the art of flower pounding. The clarity of detail achieved when using this method suprised us and spurred us on to try many different flowers and leaves. After experimenting with this technique we were then taught how to trap flowers between layers of fabric.

A colour page from a magazine, Aqua Bond, scrim, beads and decorative machine stitches were used to create these lovely brooches at our dayschool in March with Jill Flower.

The recent exhibition with the Market Square Quilters was very sucessful. Many people visited the venue over the weekend end and we had many positive and complimentary comments about our work. It was a good opportunity to talk to visitors about many of the techniques used in our work and explain how the effects were achieved.

Everyone was asked to place seven unwanted items from their sewing box into a paper bag and then seal it. These were brought along to a meeting and we each chose a different bag. We had to make an item from the pieces inside. It proved quite challenging but there was an amazing array of ideas. These pieces can be seen at the 'Make It Show" in Farnborough, Friday 28th February till Sunday 2nd March.

This was planned as a chatty and informal evening. Members were encouraged to choose an embroidery stitch they had not used before. Books and examples were available to use for inspiration. Everyone seemed to find it a worthwhile evening.

Inspired by the music of Stravinsky, this piece for the 'Music in Stitches' project was created by Sara Dickinson.

Newbury Embroiderers’ Guild has just completed a major new project entitled ‘Music In Stitches’. Members were asked to choose a piece of music that was special to them and to interpret it in stitch. We included every type of music imaginable: classical, folk, ballads, pop, hymns, jazz, songs from the shows, nothing was off limits!

We have used a variety of techniques: machine embroidery, gold work, laminating, beading, bonding, appliqué, photo transfer, dyeing and of course lots of hand stitching.

The work has taken some two years to complete and now comprises 30 pieces. These were displayed at the Watermill Theatre in Bagnor near Newbury during August 2013 and then at the Corn Exchange in the centre of Newbury until January 4th 2014.

The image above was created by Susan Lane and was inspired by the piece of music 'Romeo and Juliet' by Dire Straits.

We've decided to launch a new website to showcase some of the things we do here at the Newbury Embroiderers. We also want to encourage new members to come along and take part - so take a look around and get in touch. We would love to hear from you!