Having just enjoyed a glass of port in her dressing gown, Sheelagh Still has relaxed just enough for a lie down on the sofa.

Removing her robe and draping a sheet over her lower body, she sinks into a couch as a circle of easels surround her.

For the 64-year-old organiser of a new Scottish Women's Institute in Mull, her only inhibition as she posed naked for the life drawing class was her hip problem.

"The tutor suggested a different pose and wanted me to straddle a chair, Christine Keeler style, but I couldn't because I have an arthritic hip," Sheelagh says.

"But I did kneel on the sofa with my rear on show."

The Dervaig Divas are riding the wave of a new style of the SWI, shunning the stuffy practices of the past for a more relaxed approach. They share their life stories over a pint in the local pub, make wreaths with a local florist and sketch their semi-naked group organiser over glasses of wine and nibbles of cheese.

More mundane aspects of meetings, such as minute taking and event organising, are done through Facebook, while events are planned around its members' schedules rather than sticking rigidly to one monthly meeting, whether it's after the school bell tolls, when women arrive home from work or even on weekends.

It's a far cry from the Rural of Sheelagh's past in the tiny island village with a population of just 350 people.

Disbanding in 2013, Sheelagh says members were "fed up" and "lacked enthusiasm" for the Scottish Women's Rural Institute.

It wasn't just Dervaig that felt the SWRI, running since 1917, was feeling tired. Membership has dramatically fallen from around 30,000 women in the 1980s to just 16,691 at the last consensus in 2015, mostly due to the age of its members.

While women as young as 21 have been welcome to join, the majority of members are now well into their retirement.

It's a problem the general council had to face head-on, or watch as a Scottish institution nearing its centenary crumbled away into a historic anecdote.

"[The SWRI] was devised just at the end of the First World War for country women whose husbands were away at war to come together and socialise," explains Scottish Women's Institutes chairwoman Christine Hatton.

The 63-year-old adds: "Obviously it's changed over the years but it still all about fun and friendship."

To reach out to women in urban areas, the institute went through a rebrand in 2015, dropping rural from its title and modernising the logo.

It was the launch of a new pilot scheme to introduce more relaxed SWI groups, inspired by a similar movement in England and Wales, that could prove to be the step change needed to secure the institute's future.

The Dervaig Divas, the first group in the new style to meet in Scotland, now has more than 60 members between the ages of 30 and 70, and is preparing to celebrate its first anniversary later this month.

With eight more groups launching in the last year and another two in the pipeline, it seems as though the SWI may be starting to reverse its fortunes.

Each new group sets its own agenda and its own method of applying the SWI principles of fun and friendship.

While Dervaig do life drawing, Garnethill in Glasgow discuss female circumcision and attended the Reclaim the Night march in November.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen's Deen Divas are training for the Kiltwalk to raise money for good causes while planning craft nights in coffee shops.

"I think people forget our founder Catherine Blair was a suffragette," explains Ann Milne, the creator of the Deen Divas.

"She was a feminist and recognised the importance and worth of women in rural communities."

Ann admits she was reluctant at first to launch a pilot group in Aberdeen but her mother, a lifelong member, encouraged her to find out more about the scheme.

"Ever since I was a little girl, my mum was part of the Rural - she never missed it. It was her one social thing a month but it never inspired me," she says.

At the discussion in Edinburgh last year, she was inspired by the stories of the new pilots launching across the country, and how fluid and flexible they could be.

With around 40 regulars, including three generations from the same family, the group meet once a month in coffee shops and have started a fortnightly book club.

Ann says they have worked closely with local, more traditional SWI groups who have supported them greatly in their new venture but, for now, the idea of entering craft and baking competitions is off the agenda.

She says: "Initially the Rural was started for women who felt isolated in the community but urban women want to be part of something too, there's that hamster wheel of work that they don't have the time or the community to socialise in.

"When we surveyed people at the first meeting, everyone said what they really wanted to get out of the group was just to meet people."

With the pilot showing real signs of engagement in communities and reaching age groups usually overlooked by the SWI in the past, organisers hope that when the test period ends in 2017 the scheme will be rolled out nationwide, preserving the institute and its history while serving a new generation of women.

Ann says: "When I started the group, there was a lot of 'you're not that age just yet', I took a bit of ribbing but we're starting to break down those barriers. We need to adapt to modern women's lifestyles."

Sheelagh agrees: "The people who are coming now would never have come along before.

"Like my neighbours across the road, they would never come. The competitiveness, the stuffiness, taking on treasurers. It put them off."

While SWI chairwoman Christine agrees the flexible style of new SWI groups is a positive step forward in modernising the institution, she adds that losing members who are part of more traditional groups is not their aim.

While they may not use social media or meet in bars, activities like silversmithing, historical walks, day trips and Scottish dancing are still keeping more traditional Rural members more than occupied.

For Sheelagh though, the likes of Dervaig and Deen Divas could hold the key to keeping the SWI going for another century.

She says: "People really need to understand we need to attract new members or it will just die off.

"You can't change the traditional ones, unless they peter out. But for me, these groups are much more adventurous."