Report for Leonard Stanley Wine Circle

MEMBERS were reminded of the annual outing to Weston’s Cider at Much Marckle on July 8 and for completed forms to be given to Chris.

Tim reported that we now have our own updated website within the village website which had been done by Noel Baker and congratulated him on an excellent job.

We were also reminded of the June Garden Party to be held at the Grange on June 24 and thanked John and Fiona for the use of their beautiful garden – let’s hope that the sun will shine on us.

Without further ado, Tim introduced Jackie Hall who owns Sew & Sew in Stroud who gave a most interesting talk on Japanese Embroidery.

We heard how as a child she learnt to embroider and sew under the guidance of her grandmother and had loved needlework at school.

After getting married and with four children, she did a lot of dressmaking and then bought her shop 39 years ago.

She became interested in Japanese Embroidery after visiting an exhibition and literally became hooked.

It took five years of training to become a teacher and she then went to Japan in 1994 and learnt to make silk out of a silkworm cocoon.

We were shown different samples of all types of stitching, using many different skills including using real gold silk and were fascinated to see how to make a thread

Jackie impressed us with her love and knowledge of this art and has exhibited in many different countries, including Japan, France, Australia, New York etc and has trained under the Grand Master of the highest school in Japan.

We were so lucky to be able to view many of her creations and when she described one which depicted her family, we all felt the emotion that had gone into this.

Although this particular topic had been chosen in mind for our lady members, many of the questions came from men and at the end I am not sure who enjoyed Jackie’s talk most.

We all felt very lucky to have seen her beautiful work and were impressed by her love of this type of embroidery that literally came from the soul.