Notices December meeting

Note - January Library date is Saturday 2nd not as shown on notes distributed at the meeting.

Embroiderers’ Guild Birmingham Branch: Meeting Notices December 20 15

Welcome to our Christmas Party we hope you enjoy the goodies and the chance to sit and stitch together. We also have our Competition. Voting will take place later when we are stitching, but please have a look beforehand and begin to think about your choice. When we vote place a coin in the saucer in front of your chosen piece (the value of the coin makes no difference). Thank you to everyone who has entered. Make sure you get your copy of Branchline and thank you to Marion for pulling this together.

Cocomad we have agreed in the committee that we should sustain our presence here and hope to liaise with Weavers and Spinners and have a space together on reasonably simple basis with a bit less intensive hard work from some of us. Tonight there are Christmas cardsmade by you for the festival last year and some other little goodies that were left over, you may find a children’s stocking filler so please have a look. Proceeds all to Branch funds.

As we mentioned in the last notices we are very aware of the significance of the current national consultation. The committee has discussed this and our shared view is summarisedand has been circulated. We will start tonight’s meeting with a chance for questions / discussion and don’t forget to send back your own response to the Guild.

Clare continues to be our link person for the Capability Brown Project. Our branches exhibition time at Charlecote will start on 10th August and go on till 31st October. If you hurry you can get free entrance with your membership card before 31st December. We would like to get 25 pieces together, including the YE group.

Clare and Anne Thrumpston from Solihull worked very hard to ensure that we had a presence at Makit and Lacit Exhibition in Solihull on the weekend of 5th December. I did a shift and it was a really positive event with lots of our leaflets being taken away.

Please complete the questionnaire about travelling books and leave it with us tonight. We will restart in the New Year at the January meeting, based on your feedback. Several of the books were displayed at the Makit exhibition to great acclaim.

Don’t forget to give information to Meriel about potential car sharing for meetings.

Washboard Health Group. This has been very successful, a huge thankyou to everyone who helped Anne Watts, June Parkinson, Liz Fossey, Janet Molloy and Anne Haigh who organised it all. We hope that it may be possible to display something at the Regional Day.

Young Embroiderers:- belatedly we want to record officially our thanks to Louise Burns for her hard work creativity and commitment. We heard from her replacement as leader Ruth at the AGM and we are very grateful for her willingness to take this on and to Janet for her ongoing commitment. We have been discussing YE in committee and have nominated Anne Haigh to be a formal link person. We also for the future would like to establish something for young people based in Birmingham itself as well as the existing group. If you have an interest in working with young people or good ideas please speak to Anne or me. We are also now collecting names and contact details of children and parents who have come to the Library. 

The decision the committee had made on selling items at the meetings had had unexpected consequences. The level of selling and the items for sale was too much and left no space to promote the Guild and our activities. We must have that space to support the charitable aims and status of the guild, and while selling of kits for members to try something different supports the educational aim, other selling conflicts with the charitable status of the Guild and with the ethos of the Quakers, whose venue we use. Therefore the committee are defining items for sale as items you can’t get elsewhere - e.g. kits, finished pieces of work, and items made by members being sold on behalf of recognised charities.

On the subject of the Library don’t forget January the 2nd the perfect way to chase away New Year blues. The January meeting is a members meeting and will give us a chance to look at everyone’s travelling books, so please bring yours with you. We will also bring works in progress for the tactile books for all to see and there will be a further opportunity to get involved in making your own if you would like to.

Thank you to for your continuing support for the raffle. January’s colour is red.

Once again a very happy Christmas thank you for being part of the branch and continuing to support us enjoy the festive treats. Bernadette Wilkinson on behalf of the committee.