Category: Embroidery

Galloping towards Saturday Sept 2nd

We’ve had a  somewhat wet summer here in Northern Ireland, fortunately we can always find  plenty to do as we are gallop towards our first 2017 – 18 Guild meeting on Saturday 2nd September.

August is Craft Month and  we have been enjoying many exhibitions, workshops and talks all over Northern Ireland – too many wonderful projects to mention and there’s still a wee bit of time in the month to catch something else.

alkisti_hou

Days of blue skies and fluffy clouds and sunshine. as evidenced thanks to an Instagram photo from @alkisti_hou, have been punctuated with rain, as of  just  now,  at the time of writing, the rain is pouring down, or ‘bucketing’ as we call it.

Luckily there is no shortage of things to do, including   the odd excursion to one of the many establishments serving  refreshments. Such as   “The Dark Horse” near the Cathedral Quarter and the tenth establishment to receive one of the special Game of Throne’s doors.

Tourism Ireland Unveils the Last Door. The Dark Horse, Belfast

Not that everyone in Northern Ireland is  “Game of Thrones” mad, though it may appear that way and if you follow on, you will see why it is being mentioned in connection with the first Guild meeting of our season.

It is impossible to live in Northern Ireland and not be aware of  GoT and it is so exciting to see the many visitors coming to here to visit  GoT film locations  and we hope  enjoy our hospitality.

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The Dark Hedges, Ballymoney.  18th Century Avenue of Beech Trees. Aka Kingsway in Game of Thrones.
What are the Game of Throne doors?

One of the most iconic scenes and most visited site is the Dark Hedges, aka Kingsway to GoT fans. Locals have always known and loved this avenue. The beech trees are 300 years old,  so  no surprise to hear that some were felled during fierce storms.  A sad demise for such proud trees, and a dilemma of what to do with them. Someone came up with the idea of using the fallen trees to carve out scenes from each of the GoT series.   Ten in total.  

The intricately carved door depicting scenes from the final dramatic moments of Series 6. Location : The Dark Horse.

These, such as the one above, have been placed in different locations throughout Northern Ireland. In April 2017 Tourism NI launched a “Journey of Doors passport” –  visit the 10 Game of Thrones Doors across Northern Ireland and collect a unique stamp at each of the locations.

Why all this talk of GoT? During the summer  some of our members have been  engaged, under Valerie Wilson’s direction, in embroidering the Game of Thrones tapestry now hanging in the Ulster Museum.

Jayne McClenaghan is the link between GoT  and our forthcoming programme, about which, we are very excited; a varied and interesting series of talks and workshops.

Indeed our 2017 – 18 season kicks off on Saturday 2nd September, with the aforementioned, Jayne  who with others,  has spent some of her summer embroidering the GoT tapestries.    [Seamless, if long winded link?]

Jayne’s talk is entitled ‘Improving lives through craft’, intriguing? Find out more about her at her blog  One Day At a Time.  This gives you a glimpse into her life: in addition to working part time as a nurse, embroidering GoT, and teaching patchwork and quilting, she volunteers at the National Trust property Mount Stewart .  Where she finds the time for all her activities is a puzzle. Jayne certainly proves the truth of the old adage: “if you want something done give it to a busy person”. Lucille-Ball-Quote

The committee has been working hard to make the programme current, varied and related to NIPG interests and activities. There will be a mixture of talks, short afternoon workshops, and all day workshops. Also a few Friday workshops which proved so popular last year.

We apologise for the delay in posting our forthcoming programme. In addition to confirming speakers, venues have to be confirmed. Though we are indeed fortunate to have our base in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, at times they need the space we use for events they are organising.  We will be posting our programme very soon so keep your eyes peeled and enjoy the last few weeks of summer.

Happy Sewing

NB Header photo shows a few of the quilts seen in situ on the beds in various cottages in the Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra. 

 

Tapestry and Teacakes by Anne James

Working on The Game of Thrones (GoT) tapestry

On 26th June, I received an email from the Guild asking for volunteers to hand embroider a “very important piece – fabulous fabric – specially made” at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, that had to be finished by 10 July 2017, with the unveiling of the project on 17 July.

 

I liked the sound of it!  So I signed up for it.  What a surprise – it was a huge tapestry specially woven for the latest series of The Game of Thrones!

And it was gorgeous!  And very, very bloodthirsty!

 

We were all sworn to secrecy.  And we kept our word.  Not a single leak!  My husband became more and more curious as the days went on.  I didn’t tell him what I had been doing, until the Mail and the Sun broke the news on-line the night before the media launch.

It was fascinating work.

 

The tapestry had been specially woven and our job was to highlight various parts of  it, generally hair and clothing, with the blood, crowns, sword hilts etc being highlighted in metallic thread (a nightmare to sew!) to make them stand out even more from the background.

 

 

 

I was very proud of my “hair embroidery”, and even more proud of embellishing the zombies’ clothing to make it look even more decayed.  Not often one is asked to do that!

There were four of us from the Guild and others from the other Craft Guilds, around 30 volunteers in all.  We worked well together, with quiet conversations going on all round. The constant supply of Tunnocks Tea Cakes greatly helped!

The tapestry came to us in 6 panels, as they came off the looms.  Each panel represented one series, with an illustration of each episode woven into it.  The last panel was very late indeed, arriving on 13th July.  With the media-launch scheduled for 17th, we were working as fast as we could.  It also meant that I didn’t get to embellish the ‘decaying flesh’ I had been asked to do, and for which there was a specific colour of thread!

Each panel – about 35 feet long – was laid out on a long run of work tables, and a number of us worked on each panel simultaneously.  As well as the embroidery and embellishing, we needed to sew Velcro to the back of the tapestry so that it could be hung.  Once I got into a rhythm with this, I reckoned to herringbone Velcro at a rate of 5 feet per hour.  Others were faster!

The gallery we were working in was closed to the public “for routine maintenance”.  I did rather wonder what visitors to the Museum made of the groups of ladies coming and going to carry out the “Maintenance”!

We were given a preview of the tapestry in the Ulster Museum immediately after the media launch.  My word, it was impressive!  And the really interesting thing is – it is a work in progress.  Each episode of the current series will be woven and sent to the Museum for embellishing and hanging along with the rest of the tapestry.  Our incoming Treasurer, Jayne McClenaghan  was lucky enough to work on the first episode.

I have really enjoyed the experience.  It was exciting, interesting and varied work.  I met new people, which is always good, and in short, I had a ball!  I’m looking forward to working on it some more.  My friends and my younger relatives are so impressed!