For our June meeting we welcomed Susie from Long Eaton All Media Art Club. Ably assisted by Wendy, Linda and Lorraine she introduced us to Indian Block Printing on tote bags. We had a great turn out with 32 members and 5 visitors and it was a really enjoyable and productive evening.

Susie brought a huge variety of printing blocks and paint colours so we were all free to make choices and express our creativity. At the end of the evening we all had our individually decorated tote bags to take home and there were some fabulous designs. Well done ladies!

Check out some of our creations below:

Our May meeting was one of two parts. First of all Jenny told us about the ‘Bystander can be Lifesavers’ resolution which received the support of our members. We felt it was a resolution we could actually do something about either in terms of educating ourselves, raising awareness or fund raising. Definitely one for further discussion.

After the resolution discussion we cleared the floor for our introduction to tap dancing with Catherine Chivers from Manor Arts who arrived with an array of tap shoes for us to borrow. Before we knew it we were doing heel taps, shuffles and even paradiddles! Catherine was impressed with how quickly we learned the steps and how good we sounded! It was great fun and a good workout too.

For our April meeting we were privileged to have our very own Ruth Palmer give us a talk “Someone Else’s Garden” about her 18 seasons volunteering in the gardens of the National Trust site, Calke Abbey.

Ruth gave us a fascinating insight into the history of the house and the evolution of the gardens, as well as the plants grown across the seasons and her work as a volunteer. One of Ruth’s main responsibilities is harvesting flowers and preparing bouquets and posies for display across the estate, she bought us a beautiful example from her own garden which she gifted to a lucky member who had a birthday coming up!

Thank you Ruth!

In March we held our annual meeting where we re-elected Sally as our president!

The meeting combined reflecting on the past year, looking forward to a new programme of event and discovering unknown things about each other! As usual, the time went quickly and we were having so much fun that we forgot to take any photos!

We also collected Easter eggs for Forget Me Notts which were much appreciated by the charity.

In February we were delighted to welcome Ruth Watkin! Ruth is a costume maker based in Nottingham, she has been passionate about sewing since childhood and specialised in costume as part of a Theatre Design degree course. Ruth has worked for several theatres and museums, as well as private commissions and her particular interest is in historical costuming.

Ruth talked about her work including the process she goes through when making a costume and bought some examples of her work for us to take a closer look at. We were fascinated to learn about some of the things she has made – who knew that producing costumes for a film can be so complex and so many had to be produced for a single character!!