Bling and sparkle

Mavis Shoesmith, Brighton Pavillion

The first AGM of Southdowns Creative Stitchers was held yesterday. It was good to celebrate the start of our new independent stitch group. The Chair’s report will be available for members; the brief summary is that after a lot of hard work, we are now well established as an independent stitch group with a healthy membership, healthy budget, and lots going on. After a lot of hard work sorting out things like a new constitution, bank account, budget etc., we are very pleased that we we can get on with what we all enjoy…stitch. The business part of the meeting was dealt with quickly, allowing time to look at the pop-up exhibitions and to catch up with old friends and new members.

Mavis Shoesmith inspired us with a pop-up exhibition of her City and Guilds work – you will find some photos of her display later in this post. Also on show were pop-up exhibitions by the three sub-groups; Traditional Embroidery, Thursday Workshop and Mixed Media. Photos below.

We also had the ‘Travelling Scrapbooks’ out for people to see. These are 14 scrapbooks that were created as a lockdown project. Each person chose a visual project and provided a sketchbook. The books then travelled round the group so that people could add their own contributions to that subject. At the end, the books ended up with their original owners, stuffed full of inspiration and surprises from other people. We hadn’t quite appreciated just how much work would be on show in these books, so a brief showing didn’t do them justice. We will try to think of a better way to show then another time – maybe here on the website, or maybe as a slide show at one of our ‘sit and stitch’ meetings.

Here are some images of work by the three different sub-groups. What a wonderful mixture of techniques, media, designs and colour…and what a lot of ‘woman-hours’ must have gone into all of these!

Traditional Embroidery group and Thursday workshop group

Traditional Group and Thursday Workshop
Traditional Embroidery group and Thursday workshop group
Traditional Embroidery group and Thursday workshop group
Traditional Embroidery group and Thursday workshop group
Traditional Embroidery group and Thursday workshop group
Mixed Media group
Mixed Media group
Mixed Media group
Mixed Media group
Mixed Media group
Mixed Media group

And now on to Mavis Shoesmith’s work. Mavis brought her City and Guilds work for us to see and drool over. The name of this post is ‘Sparkle and Bling’ for a reason; Mavis loves to use glittery, sparkly additions to her work. She brought a very wide range of work, from traditional to experimental. Inspirations for her designs come from such different sources that make her work very individual and varied. Thank you Mavis!

Detail of hanging
Mavis Shoesmith, Brighton Pavillion
Mavis Shoesmith
Mavis Shoesmith, ‘A walk though the trees’
Mavis Shoesmith, Goldwork Sampler
Mavis Shoesmith, based on Elizabethan embroidery
Mavis Shoesmith
Mavis Shoesmith, ‘The Dandy Diamont’

4 thoughts on “Bling and sparkle”

  1. It was an absolute delight to see all the work that has been done by all the individual groups. We’re such a talented lot aren’t we? We should do this more often.

    As for Mavis’s work, it is absolutely wonderful and she is such a modest person. Her work is so varied and so beautifully done. She deserves to have a book printed on it!
    How often is her work seen I wonder?

    Anyway it was a very enjoyable afternoon.

    1. Well said Pam. Yes, isn’t it lovely to see a whole collection of someone’s work. When you say ‘we should do this more often’, you may have sown an idea for the committee to think about…

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