Last week a group of us visited the NEC in Birmingham. Our ticket covered three different exhibitions, Sewing for Pleasure, Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch and Hobby Crafts. In addition to the retail therapy we enjoyed seeing our Macedonia Olympic postcards on display.
Brenda Hickinbottom also had her work on display. As well as being a member of the Marlborough & District Embroidery Guild, Brenda also belongs to Meniscus Textile Artists, which are based in Rothley Leicestershire. The subject for their stand was “Iconic Women” and Brenda chose the ATA Spitfire pilots in the Second World War for her work.
She tells me, her preparation included looking at photos of scenery and sky formations together with a lot of thinking time. She then drew a rough sketch of outlines for the overall size.
Using silk organza layers, trapping silk fibres and paper she free machine embroidered to create the shapes and textures. Letting the machine needle and threads draw the design in her head as you would a pencil when drawing.
In addition to the individual projects each member of the group made an apron with a single word on it and when displayed it read: “These aprons represent the traditional image of women but women are about more than this”.
Ros