We are excited to be starting the year in our new home base- the South Barwon Community Centre at 33 Mount Pleasant Road, Belmont.
Our first Sit and Sew meeting for the year is on Monday 9th February at 10am (2nd Monday of the month) and this one is our AGM. We still do lots of chatting and all types of embroidery stitching. Come and check out the new space and join in the fun.
We packed our belongings in early January and are about to settle in to our new home base. The rooms are light and bright and we look forward to all our groups now meeting in the same location. We will miss our shop over the road so bring your lunch or take a short walk around the corner to High Street where several lunch options are available.
We’ve almost come to the end of the year but our branch and our groups are all planning great times for 2024
An example of Thread Painting by Liandre Hawkes (see classes for a beginners version)
Some great Classes and workshops have been scheduled.
Our Groups have lots of activities planned: GeeTAG is going with “A Sense of Place” and will be producing postcard sized pieces for a box or a book. Slow Stitch has a series of mini stitch demos, very helpful for beginners, some techniques for colour and design and some sessions just for fun. Counted Thread are making this the year of Hardanger. Canvas work will explore more of Jean Hilton’s fascinating and tricky stitches. Artisan Books will work on their techniques sample book and produce all sorts of amazing bound items. Patchworkers are exploring blocks using Boro and Sashiko stitching.
What a lot of activity. Do join us – there must be something for every body in that line up!
To Join The Embroiderers Guild, Victoria go to the web site and make sure you join the Geelong Branch. Our main meeting is 10am-2pm, 2nd Monday of the month at St David’s Church Hall, Aphrasia Street in Newtown. Evening group is on the second Tuesday.
Colourful stitching by our President Pauline Mackenzie
We are making a new start with the hope that we will be able to get together more often. We do enjoy our friendships and shared love of stitching.
Our first Sit and Sew meeting this year will be on Monday 14th February 10am – 2pm at St David’s Church Hall Aphrasia Street Newtown. We’d love to see everyone there and look forward to meeting some of our new members again, or for the first time!
It’s also our AGM when our new committee will be voted in. If you’d like to help running our branch or think a friend would be great in this role please contact us before 21st January.
Classes and Workshops will be up and running soon. First up some cute Rabbits.
Our smaller groups will also be getting under way – the Canvas work group are first up with a Round Box Top mini workshop, 20th January. Patchwork Group meets on Tuesday 25th January
Assisi work by Barbara Grose
Counted Thread enthusiasts will have a meeting on Monday February 7 10.30am- 1pm at South Barwon Community Centre, Mount Pleasant Rd Belmont. We will see if there are enough people to form a new group. If you love Assisi, Hardanger, Blackwork, Cross stitch, Pulled or Drawn Thread, Shwalm or any other counting stitches please think about joining in. The group will share knowledge and perhaps have a program of learning new stitches.
Artisan Books and Geetag (Textile Arts Group) – Saturday 12th Feb and Slow Stitch Thursday 10th Feb (good for beginners) are also keen to get going again.
Wyndham Vale group will also be meeting to decide on their future meetings so keep an eye out for info.
Our famous Garage Sale will be held on Saturday 26th March so start going through your stash to find donations – bring these to Sit and Sew or contact us for a pick up.
Our newsletter Geelong Threads will keep members in touch with the latest on activities classes and groups
The Covid-19 virus is affecting all sorts of activities. We will be closing our meetings and classes until at least the end of April when we will be seeing what is appropriate then.
Here is a letter from our President
Dear Members
I am very sad to have to let you know that as a result of the current COVID-19 (corona) virus situation the Committee has decided that all scheduled classes, the April Sit and Sew meeting, the Sit and Sew session scheduled at the Library for Heritage Week in April and all meetings of our Guidance Groups will be cancelled (or postponed in the case of classes) from 17 March until the end of April.
If you know a member who doesn’t have access to email, would you kindly pass this information on to them. I will also try to contact these members.
Embroidery House is closing for the next few months, and other branches are taking similar actions to ours in order to protect the health of our members. The Committee will meet again at the end of April to assess the situation and we will let you know what the next steps will be for our Branch.
I suppose that the only positive thing to come out of this is that some of our unfinished projects may get completed!
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any questions about this decision. It wasn’t taken lightly, but we all felt that the safety of our members was the priority.
Kind regards – and keep stitching. – Leonie Lister
You are invited to our celebration for the Geelong Seniors Festival on Monday October 14th 2019 from 12 noon – 2pm
Join us for stitching, a chat, a light lunch and see what we are embroidering.
Our Sit and Sew meeting at St David’s will be open to the public between 12 noon and 2 pm. A light luncheon will be available for everyone. If you have something you are working on please bring it along, or we will provide a small item to stitch if you wish.
The Geelong Seniors Festival is the largest community celebration for Seniors in Regional Victoria and a major partner of the state wide Victorian Seniors Festival.
As well as being a great opportunity to get out and about for little or no cost, the Festival provides a rare insight into what is on in Geelong for the rest of the year, as most of the events are staged by local clubs and interest groups.
We celebrated our 49th birthday as a branch of the Guild with Victorian President Linda Hagar presenting 25 year membership awards to Dorothy Day and to Jacqui Volpe (in absentia).
She also presented the Intermediate Certificate to Leonie Lister and Carmel Schulze. Their work for the three subjects completed was on display and was marvelled at by all.
We enjoyed our Annual General Meeting in December with our visitors from Melbourne and elected our new committee for 2017. Our new President is Lyn Hughes. Retiring President Valda King was thanked for the amazing work she has done to keep our group vibrantly alive with a bright future.
Committee members are from Left to Right in the picture: Jo Pitts, Brenda Ryan, Anna Schroeter, President Lyn Hughes, Yvonne Davidson, Tina Elms, Margaret Neill, Shirley Wilson, Lesley Duff, Vic President Linda Hagar and Gillian Norris.
Our enthusiastic speaker, Robyn Steele Stickland from Opendrawer in Camberwell showed some of her many collections including Buttons and Embroidery tools. She discovered that many of us have similar addictions and explored the reasons why we feel the need to “hoard” such things (not to mention the dreaded “Stash” word.
Kerrie’s Crewelwork Cat
At her shop she runs classes in all sorts of textile work and also gives us a chance to recycle some of our stash at her market stall days. See her web site for more of what’s on.
We also had fun working on the delightful kits for pincushions that Brenda Ryan had brought along. Hopefully some will be done for our next exhibition! We plan to have a group to work on making items for the exhibition and if you want to join in please see a committee member.
Come and visit Kerrie’s Cat at Our Heritage Festival display at the Wintergarden, 51 McKillop Street this weekend April 29th to May 1st : 10am to 4pm
Classes coming up include a visit from Internationally acclaimed tutor Hazel Blomkamp who will be exploring Needle Lace in Embroidery on 13th and 14th of July.
There was much chat and exchange of Show andTell as we met up again after the break.
Guest speaker Collin Peebles from the Geelong Food Bank opened our eyes to the desperate need for this service in Geelong. We brought basic pantry items along to donate and will try to do this at our meetings in future. It was sobering to realise that tea and coffee are considered to be luxuries!
Our visitor from the USA Velma Bolyard will be teaching us Paper Manipulations and we are looking forward to spinning thread from japanese paper, amongst other things. One place remains in this class if you are quick. See the classes section for details
Our next meeting is on Monday 21st March which is the 3rd Monday due to the public holiday.
The new year is well on the way and we are starting to think about our activities for 2016.
Our first Sit and Sew meeting will be on Monday February 8th at St Davids from 10am.
4th Wednesday Patchwork and 4th Saturday Sit and Sew groups start back in January and Counted Thread and Juniors in February.
If you belong to one of the home groups check the starting dates.
Classes are now booking and we have some exciting ones to start the year. Intermediate Canvaswork Investigations, “Rinceau” designs, and Tatting are coming up, as well as a visit from Velma Bolyard a paper artist from the USA. See the classes section for details or down load a classes flyer
Embroidery Geelong 