Stratford-upon-Avon Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers

Today's Meeting is being held on Zoom with an invite sent to members. Due to the current circumstances the published item for this month has been moved to next year, when we look forward to enjoying Shaun's 3rd talk. Today is then focused on catching up on members activity for the last couple of months, with a show and tell of all the work and activity undertaken.      We are then going to sharpen the brain with a quiz on all things WSD!       We also have for the first time and hopefully not the last, an online sales table!!!!                                                                         See you all th...

DYEING IN JULY - is going online!   Following our usual summer pattern, July is our month for dyeing experiments and we hope you have been saving flower heads, finding jars to leave in the sun ( though we are told that given time solar jars will “work” even in cold, dull weather). Some people have been experimenting with Ice dyeing and will share their results.  Abby Wrycroft and Chris Pegler have put together some information and will lead this section of the meeting, so we have sent members a list of equipment needed and instructions for what to do – plus some photos of the stunning results. We do hope you will all join us and give it a try. We shall send the ZOOM  invite for the meeting in the next few days, but plan to hold it during the morning only, 'doors' opening at 10 am for a 10.30 am start as usual. Plans for the rest of the year. Following a review with the membership, the Committee met on Tuesday and decided that it would be best to canc...

C O L O U R IN ALL ITS GLORY! In June we should have been helping with the organization of the Association's weekend on the subject of C o l o u r , and the week before we had a printing workshop booked for the guild. The workshop has been postponed to next year, and of course the weekend is cancelled. But that doesn't mean that we can't spend time this month thinking what C o l o u r s mean to us, and how best to use them in our lives. Years ago I went to a talk on C o l o u r and the speaker pointed out that if a friend tells you that they have new curtains, the first question you ask is “What C o l o u r ?” The fibre content and weave structure are secondary . We all have favourite C o l o u r s. Sometimes they are the ones which suit our skin and hair tones, sometimes they are associated with a special time or person.  Do you know why you like one particular shade ?  Or are there C o l o u r s which you really dislike ?  Do you know why ?  It wou...

OUR    WOOLLY    MARQUEE   FOR THE SHIPSTON WOOL FAIR   WEEKEND    VIRTUAL EVENT    In the  normal course of events this bank holiday Monday 25th May 2020, we would have been joining all the demonstrators and traders at the Shipston Wool Fair.  For obvious reasons this is not taking place this year. However, we didn't think that was a reason not to encourage you all to be 'having a go' with everything that is WOOLLY!  So, we have put some links here to instructions for some of the activities we would usually be deonstrating and getting you to try your hand at. One of our annual activities, and greatly enjoyed by the children in particular, is our braiding card .  Simple to cut our from a nice piece of sturdy card and then with any fibre/threads that you have available - it can be any remaining wool you have around, string or embroidery threads.  Find the pattern and instructions here. ...

Many Happy Returns  TODAY! to our Guild 4 5 y e a r s young!

45  Years  Young This month our wonderful Guild turns 45! The shame of it is that we are all going to have to celebrate in lockdown, so get those baking skills out and cook up a birthday cake and a glass of something nice to toast another year of great craft and company. Our activities this month were to to be our PAINT challenge and an afternoon on spinning wheel maintenance and care.  So not to be defeated we are going virtual!!! The CHALLENGE is still on and we will have a gallery on all our platforms, here on the web, our SOAWSD Group.io forum and on Facebook.  We will be sending out a poll on the Groups forum so we can all vote on our 1st and 2nd choice article.  So please get all your images of your PAINT CHALLENGE item to us, either through the forum gallery, emailed to our guild email or via facebook and they will all be loaded for the vote!!!  So ladies, we will need them all submitted by  9pm on Friday 15th May please. ...

We know that it is probably clearly obvious to everyone, we don't anticipate having our usual meetings for the next few months. However, we plan to make sure that you don't miss the Guild. Now that we have settled into our new routines – working from home, staying at home as much as possible, and in some cases staying at home all the time, I hope we shall all have time to pursue our time-honoured efforts at Stash-busting and finally getting round to working on the UFOs which may fill our cupboards. (UnFinished Objects in case you are wondering.) So that we can all keep in touch and inspire each other we have set up a forum site to which all our members can contribute – Groups.io / SOAWSDGuild . Lots of you have already joined and we will send out the invitation again for those of you who may have lost it. You can reply following a particular topic or start a new topic if there is something else you want to talk about. By these means we plan to hold virtual meetings each mon...