Group Outing to Saltaire – June 2024

Several of our members joined the Village Group trip to Yorkshire at the end of June. We visited Saltaire and had time to wander around the unique village of Saltaire – a world UNESCO site built by Titus Salt to house the workers for his woollen mills. The old mill now houses a permanant display of works by Bradford born artist David Hockney. An added bonus was the 1940’s festival taking place in the village with a tea dance at Victoria Hall and people dressed in 1940’s fashions.

For those of us who walked over the river Aire to Roberts Park, a cricket match was in progress although the skies were a little grey. From Saltaire we journeyed on to Ilkley and saw the famous Ilkley Moor and Cow and Calf rocks sitting above the town. A cuppa at Betty’s tea room beckoned for some of us and of course some retail therapy! A most enjoyable day!

June 2024 Subgroup meetings

Most of our subgroups took a break this month – a popular time for holidays! The Baking Beauties did meet to share their ‘Something Fruity’ bakes.

The Royal Cheshire County Show

The theme for this year’s show was ‘The Olympics’. Despite a reduced space/number of classes this year Whitley WI still submitted a number of entries as well as providing helpers for refreshments and stewarding.

Our main ‘team’ entry was in the ‘Teams’ section. The Craft group have been working hard for months on their entry – to depict ‘Team GB’. We included a range of items representing each of the 4 countries, with the items for judging being Whisky Marmalade for Scotland, a needle punched shamrock for Northern Ireland, a knitted guardsman and sentry box for Engand and a Bara Brith loaf for Wales. This was a great piece of teamwork involving a lot of people – thanks to Annette for coordinating it. Click on our Craft subgroup page to read more about our entry.

Scotland and Wales
England and N. Ireland
Going for Gold

In another team class Susan L and Ann O’B entered the ‘Going for Gold’ section with a beautiful embroidery, apricot jam and an Almond Cake. Although neither of these were placed in the very competitive classes it was great to see Whitley represented with 2 very striking entries. We did win prizes in the preserve class with a second and a third place awarded to Pat S for her marmalade and Susan L for her apricot jam

Main Meeting – June 2024 – An Embroiderer’s Tale

In June we held our traditional joint meeting with Dutton WI, it was great to welcome back old friends Our President, Melanie, opened the meeting with pictures of her visit to the NFWI Annual Meeting at the Royal Albert Hall as representative of a few WIs in our area. It was her first National meeting and she really appreciated the opportunity to attend

Click to read Melanie’s report on the event

Our speaker for the evening was Tina Saunders with ‘An Embroiderer’s Tale’. She studied at The Royal School of Needlework and she showed us many of the amazing pieces of coursework that she produced. It was fascinating to see the tiny stitches, incredible detail and use of shading to produce some fantastic results – her rhinocerus was particularly admired.

She then took on a number of different jobs including working for the famous shoemaker Jimmy Choo for a number of years where her work included the shoes that Camilla wore when she married Charles. Her most memorable time was the 6 years she spent as a dressmaker for Queen Elizabeth II. She shared pictures of some of her favourite outfits from this period.

She has now moved North and is kept busily self-employed with a wide range of projects, dressmaking and courses. A very enjoyable talk, with the message to enjoy life, follow your dreams, and do a job you love.

Tina then judged our competition which this month was for a thimble. This picture shows Janet (our competition organiser) and Tina discussing the entries. It was very appropriate that Ann C, our winner, is a joint member of Dutton and Whitley!

Bowls – Adelaide Hough Sheild

Twelve of our members competed for the Adelaide Hough Shield on Monday 10th June. Adelaide was a leading member of our bowls team for some years until ill-health prevented her from continuing. She donated this Sheild in 1991, and this was the 34th year the competition has been held – last year we had to abandon it because of torrential rain.

This year, despite a very bad forecast, we were lucky with the weather with only one short spell of fairly light rain. It was particularly good to welcome Ann C and Eileen – who haven’t played bowls before – but proved to be very good at it!

The winner was Ann T, Janet P came 2nd and Pat G 3rd. Well done Ann, you retained the shield after winning in 2022. As always we are indebted to Joan P, a former member, who organised the ‘Round Robin’ tournament for us. It is lovely that she still helps us out, always with a smile!