The art of embroidery on show in gallery exhibition

A selection of Japanese embroidery by Shirley Julian feature at PTG's current Regional Embroiderers' exhibition, Earth, Sea and Sky.

A special feature of the Earth, Sea and Sky' Regional Embroiderers' exhibition currently on display in Percy Thomson Gallery is the work of Taranaki guest embroiderers Mary Vinnicombe and Shirley Julian.

Mary and Shirley were interviewed by fellow embroiderer Felicity Willis.

Both Mary and Shirley have a long and illustrious history of creating embroidery. Now in their 80s and still stitching and creating - a needle in the hand is as natural as breathing to them.

Over the years they have exhibited widely in national and regional exhibitions. Shirley's forte is Japanese embroidery and her silken pictures will be her legacy to her family, although her can-do attitude means that over the years she has not restricted herself to any one style.

She has been responsible for creating a number of large community embroideries, on show in the Opunake High School hall and South Taranaki District Council foyer.

It was through the CWI that Shirley attended her first embroidery classes with Joan de Abaffy.

In the late 1970s she and her friends established an embroidery guild in Opunake - groups all around Taranaki were doing the same thing with Ms de Abaffy's encouragement.

"Once we set up the guild we went to Association of New Zealand Embroiderers' Guilds national conferences and took classes."

From then on Shirley attended every conference and as a regular member of the Opunake guild there were regular classes in different techniques.

Shirley saw a community wall hanging embroidered by the Kapiti guild and thought "we can do that," and when the assembly hall at the Opunake High School burned down in 1982, she decided the guild should create a hanging for the new hall.

Shirley also took part in the ANZEG's project to make embroidered hangings for Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.

Her contribution is a wolf made as a slip and applied to the background.

Over the years she has also made church embroideries, including stoles, and in recent times has been doing more Jacobean embroidery.

Like Shirley, Mary Vinnicombe has been stitching all her life. She remembers making her own cooking apron embroidered in chain stitch with her name.

Mary says she didn't have much confidence in her abilities and didn't join a guild until the late 1990s.

She likes to master a technique and then start adapting and adding new elements to the design.

In recent years much of Mary's embroidery has been for St Mary's Cathedral in New Plymouth. She is currently working on four linen purificators and was also part of a group making a set of stoles.

Mary says it's difficult for her to choose her favourite embroidery technique and she has really enjoyed the creative side of her work.

Her award-winning Taranaki piece is like a painting, but with thread. Sometimes an embroidery will take a long time to get to fabric and thread.

"It has to look right in my mind's eye before I commit it to stitch - sometimes it takes two or three months of thinking."