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These garments represented the many tribal peoples from this region, their diversity, skills and love of embroidered decoration. Their vibrant and distinctive textile traditions showcase the identities of these cultures.

Close inspection revealed the tiny stitches worked in silk or wool using chain stitch, cross stitch or ladder stitch mostly worked by women and girls.

Continuing our exploration of different embroidery styles we put our hands to the Japanese art of sashiko.

Much more involved than we all thought it required a great deal of concentration in the pattern preparation.

Clear simple stitching creates beautiful patterns.

Here are some of our first efforts and I look forward to sharing more as they become available.

Last Summer to celebrate our groups 20th birthday we were each given a trimmed embroidery hoop.

In true lucky dip-style we didn’t get to choose the colour and therefore it was a real challenge when we were asked to create something to showcase within these rings.

The final results displayed various styles and techniques that reflect our members.

A group project earlier this year had been to create a printed panel using found objects. Items like bottle tops, erasers, brushes or lollipop sticks made marks with fabric dyes. We chose a limited range of colours and attempted to produce a stronger and lighter panel.

The surprise was that these were then cut apart and reassembled to provide a further design that was secured and embellished with contrast stitching.

A pattern and instructions were provided to make a journal cover.

Showing here are just two of the covers made illustrating both sides of the project.

Following on from making our felt we now begin to work into it.

Some pieces were embellished with additional stitching and needle felting to create these colourful works.

We started this year with learning the technique of wet felting.

Getting to grips with the process and laying on colour produced some joyous results.

We shall add stitching and embellishment next month.

A recent silk painting tutorial with Elitta Fell was a chance to learn a new technique and produced colourful results. These are some of our efforts.

Our Christmas social is always a relaxed and fun event particularly this year as we can meet again and get to know newer members.

Teas and mince pies were consumed along with the ceremonial opening of a huge Chocolat Cracker from Teresa. Silly jokes were shared and correct answers gained an extra chocolate Brussel sprout. (Quite unlike the real thing).

We concluded with an open discussion about our plans for 2022, the opportunity to select a few speakers and arrange a couple of workshops.

We departed looking forward to our activities for the year ahead.