There has been a mighty Forum formed, mostly of ladies of a certain age and freedom. To give ourselves the confidence and status of how things are done we have conferences.
The last one recently was "How to make money from your work", fairly basic one would have thought, but us ladies aren't that sure we actually want to soil our hands with trade, no that's not true, more likely we haven't the confidence to put our creations to the test.
Or maybe we just want to continue to be creative in our later years and the garden is cold in the winter and the grand children really are very tiring at times. Stitching is such an adaptable activity, can be put down at any time when any one elses priorities intervene..........had a big argument with a member who denied my fears that the cost of membership and fees might be too much for some women.
She insisted we/they must get their priorities right, with which as a demanding female myself I concur. But I can remember when i had kids, and later was a single parent and all the other permutations women have to deal with.
I insisted we could keep our costs down to ensure we were accessible to stitchers who may not be able to place our work at the top of their list.
Funnily enough there aren't any men in the Forum! I also notice that more men are using textiles in contemporary art, or at least they are the ones we hear about, obviously they are able to sort out their priorities. Hunter gatherer syndrome I suspect.
The winner of Business woman of the Year gave us a lecture about presenting ourselves and our work with panache.
We spotlight two members, one produced some of her quilted pieces, totally home grown never had a lesson in her life.
This one was inspired by a friend getting mugged, and he heard Chief mugger shout the vertical line in black. "There had better not be blood on my trainers"
The other Spotlight was based in stitching on dissolvable, where Carol had taken the design key from Tudor lace, and produced crowns, tiaras and 8ft long columns of metallic "lace".
But her most evocative pieces where made after she heard a story about a 19th century husband who decided his wife had been replaced by an evil spirit because she was not being as agreeable as usual.
The cure for this was to torture the "fairy" out of her body which after 14 days resulted in his wife's death. Carol noted the words the poor woman said as she was protesting her innocence and again on dissolvable stitched the words into a long pillar of white.
We saw it through our tears. I will add a pic if I can get one as it was also truly and terribly beautiful,
