12 December 2026, 11:00 - 4pm Burridge Gardens Community Centre Dyeing

Monthly Guild Meeting – Christmas Event

Like last year –  we will have a shared pot luck lunch – from 12.30.  please bring along food to share with everyone, and your own plate. We have plenty of cutlery, glasses and cups at Burridge.

Annual Competitions 2026:

The following subjects have been set for our awards 2026:

The Kennedy Cup for Spinning:

Using the quantity the Whitefaced Woodland fleece provided by the Guild, decide on how best to process and spin the fibre. Research the breed’s fleece type, decide on a spinning method and prepare the fleece as you prefer. The aim is to present a 20g skein at the Christmas meeting with notes of your research, your process and the intention for how you would use a larger quantity of the sample yarn.

The Tapestry Prize:  Our theme this year is ‘Mille Fleurs‘, a thousand flowers.

Mille Fleurs can be interpreted in any way you choose, by looking at and putting a modern twist to Mille Fleurs in medieval tapestries or stylised flowers in Islamic pottery and tiles or weave your favourite flowers in a style that suits your design.
As always you need to show the development of your ideas through sketches or collage to the final woven tapestry using any technique suitable to best express your idea.

Lore Youngmark Memorial Competition for Weaving: Three From One

You are asked to prepare and present three samples (or more if you like) that are three variations on one starting point. For example, you could select one weaving draft and weave it three different ways, with different yarns, different setts, different beats. Or you could take one fibre or yarn (silk, cotton, monofilament etc) and weave that three different ways. Alternatively, you could wind one warp and then test it three different ways, resetting it, rethreading it, cramming and spacing etc. The aim is to take one fixed element, such as a yarn, draft or warp, and to experiment with your starting point, testing how many variations you can get from it.
You should mount and present your samples and include full notes explaining your work (so that someone else could weave your sample). You should also include an indication of how each sample could be used, for example, for cloth to sew, as upholstery or a cushion, and so on.

 The emphasis is on inventiveness, experimentation and creativity, so your samples can be woven on any kind of loom. And definitely, having fun!

Gwen Shaw Cup: Celebrating the Natural World

May 8th 2026 is David Attenborough’s 100th birthday. To celebrate our National Treasure, you should produce a finished work exploring the flora and fauna of a named place. Flora encompasses all plant life including fungi, moss, algae for example, fauna includes insects, mammals, fish, birds etc. You can decide to investigate a tiny location, lifting a slab in a garden or considering a forgotten patch around rubbish bins for example. Or you might prefer a larger area, a garden, a woodland, part of a coastline. Whatever you choose the work you design and produce should try to express the specific character and how it supports the flora and fauna of your chosen site.

We will begin voting on competition entries over lunch, concluding at 2pm.

Alongside our usual competitions, we will also have an extended show and tell. Please bring work to share with everyone. It does not have to be part of the competitions. You can obviously include any work you had in the Morley exhibition.

9
December
2026

Barnes Spinning Group

11 - 3.00 pm Barnes Community Centre
11
April
2026

Tapestry Interest Group

Burridge Gardens Community Centre
13
June
2026

Dyers Interest Group

11am to 1pm Burridge Gardens Community Centre
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