Up close and personal with parts of the Plimoth Jacket project

*** Update: Tricia finally posted about this presentation, and I was surprised to see my own face in her post. I'm the one with the glasses on top of my head! ***

This past Tuesday, March 9, the exhibition of the Plimoth Jacket opened at Winterthur Museum. This past Friday, Tricia Wilson Nguyen visited RIT (my alma mater) to give a lecture about the project. I had the very great pleasure of attending the lecture.

There were three parts to Tricia's presentation. The first part was an overview of what it took to create the ensemble (jacket, coif, and forehead cloth). This included the recreation of several threads (such as Gilt Sylke Twist) and the participation of nearly 300 people - stitchers, spanglers, lacemakers, and textile manufacturers. The embroidery and assembly took 3700 hours to complete!

Next was a discussion of how the data gathered from this project has helped reinterpret how embroidered garments were made in the past. Historians have often assumed that a jacket such as this was the work of only one person. While experienced embroiderers can often look at samples of stitching and quickly discern the differences in tension resulting from various hands, Tricia has actually devised a way to mathematically prove this.

It's accomplished by analyzing the stitch regularity (any extra or missed stitches, as well as tension inconsistencies) and frequency (stitch size) of patches of detached buttonhole. It turns out that detached buttonhole can be mathematically analyzed in ways similar to nanocrystalline structures! The result is that while a patch of stitches isn't distinctive enough to pinpoint exactly who stitched it, we can certainly identify various levels of stitching experience.

The benefit is that existing examples of embroidery from the seventeenth century can now be analyzed to determine approximately how many hands were involved. Tricia warns that it's not exact, but that we can definitively say things like "at least 6 different people worked on this".  There's a lot more work left to do to analyze all of the detached buttonhole patches on the jacket ensemble (through close-up photographs) to see what else can be discovered about the past.

The last part of the presentation was perhaps of less interest to the stitchers in the audience, but was fascinating to the technical folks. (Being an engineer and stitcher, I appreciated the whole thing!) Tricia talked about her other business, Fabric Works, which is a consulting firm specializing in electronic textiles. The really neat thing is that Tricia actually uses traditional needlework techniques to prototype some of these e-textiles. For example, because production braiding machines waste so much material simply to get the machines threaded and ready to make braid and because the materials being used are very expensive, she used traditional Japanese braiding techniques for kumihimo to make prototype lengths of braid. In other instances, she's used the Japanese embroidery method of hand-twisting threads to create prototype threads that contain metal. Only somebody with thorough knowledge of traditional textile methods as well as a scientific background could manage this!

While I really enjoyed the presentation, perhaps the best part of the evening was at the end. Remember how I said that the jacket project also involved a forehead cloth and coif? Well, right now only the jacket is on display at Winterthur. The other pieces are still in Tricia's possession. Hooray! Yes, I had the opportunity to examine them without a piece of glass getting in the way. They truly are works of art.

Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my "real" camera, and had to make do with my cell phone. Here's the coif:

A close-up of a bird on the coif. To get an idea of the scale of this, the bird is about 2-1/2 inches long.

The forehead cloth:

I admit these pictures aren't the best. Here's a much better picture of the forehead cloth on Tricia's site.

Thanks again, Tricia, for a thoroughly enjoyable evening!

ANG ribbon winners

Last night, I received my January 2009 issue of NeedlePointers, the ANG magazine. I knew that this issue would feature the ribbon winners from the Indian Wells seminar, and I was looking forward to reading about and seeing the various entries.

I'm always amazed that the judges can rank such beautiful work. All of the winning entries are stunning. The creativity and technical skill that goes into these creations is inspirational. Thank you to ANG for taking the time to take such wonderful pictures of these pieces and add such great descriptions. The write-ups for each piece help me to fully appreciate the work and creativity of each stitcher.

The closeup picture of my Lilacs on page 22 was a great surprise (and a bit humbling). I didn't expect such a large picture! The dimensions in the description (7" x 8.5") are of the framed piece. The actual stitching is actually a tiny bit smaller than the picture in the magazine. The write-up that accompanies the picture is lovely and much appreciated! (If you don't get the magazine, you can see a picture of this piece in one of my past posts, and there's a picture of the ribbon as part of this post.)

Congratulations to all of the entrants, and especially to my fellow ribbon winners. I'm already thinking about what piece or pieces to send in for next year's exhibit!

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Pregnancy ticker: 30 weeks, 2 days.
Still boring! :-)

Blog catch-up, and other news

While I haven't been blogging much lately, I have been stitching, and, unfortunately for my pile of WIPs, planning to start new things.

First, an update on the Tudor Purse: I was making good progress on this, when it became apparent that the "scooping" motion of the Ceylon stitch was starting to aggravate the carpal tunnel in my right wrist. So, while this piece isn't very big, I've put it down for a bit. I'll have to work on it only a bit at a time.



When I put the purse down, I decided I hadn't done much sampler/linen work lately, and that was calling to me. Of course, instead of picking up Catherine Theron's Examplar IV, which is much further along, I dug out Martha Wilkins from The Scarlet Letter. I last worked on this piece back in December, and it was still in the same state as in the photo in this post. As you can see, this week I finished another band of lettering and almost the entire next band. At this rate, I might be done in the next 10 years! :-P

On Wednesday, I attended our local ANG meeting. I didn't really feel like working on notebook stitch samples with the rest of the group, so I started the outreach project that was announced last month. We're stitching heart-shaped ornaments with a centerpiece of a cancer ribbon. I can't remember the details, but we're donating these for some cause or another. (And I know MIL is cringing as she reads this since she's the outreach chair!) Anyway, I'm doing a purple ribbon for pancreatic cancer, in memory of my two grandparents whom I lost to this fast-acting disease.

I wanted the center ribbon to stand out, so I did it in detached buttonhole with a heavy thread, in this case Shepherd's Wool from the Thread Gatherer. Apparently this thread is no longer being made, since it's not listed on TG's website. I received this skein in a grab bag a few months ago, and thought it was perfect for this! The background is a couched stitch, specifically Aristeia couching (diagrammed in SuZy's Lite Stitches, one of the books I picked up at seminar), with a Brazilian embroidery rayon thread as the couched thread, and 4 strands of floss as the couching thread. I thought this would work up faster than trying to fill the entire background with stitching, and so far it has. I've only worked on this at the meeting Wednesday night and at our Thursday night LNS stitch-in. I hope to finish it this weekend.

I have a few upcoming projects, too. Tomorrow, I'm attending a class for a Bargello needlecase. Since our EGA chapter is hosting the region meeting today (though I'm not going), we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to have one of the visiting ladies stay for an extra night and teach this lovely project. One of the chapter members had taken the class from her in the past, and it's lovely. Today I need to rummage in my stash to find fabric and threads for it.

Carolyn Mitchell is visiting our LNS for a 2-1/2 day class in the middle of November, and I've signed up for this class, too. She's teaching a canvas piece called My Way, which looks like a six-patch quilt design. We need to have the borders laid out as prework, and from what I've heard, this is fairly time intensive. I've got my color scheme picked out (see the collection of threads I brought home from seminar), but I'm waiting for a pair of Evertite stretcher bars to show up in the mail. They were shipped over a week ago, but the USPS website only shows them as being received into the mail stream. Goodness knows where they might be now!

Lastly (I think), I need to get started on Luan Callery's Summer Dream, an EGA GCC that some in my chapter are doing in conjunction with the Buffalo chapter. It's due in January. I've been following Pat's progress on this same piece, and I'm looking forward to it!

In other news, I believe I did mention that I had received my pieces (and ribbons!) back from the ANG seminar exhibit. Also in the package was a little card telling me to call the Boehm porcelain factory, because they had the rose that was part of the Princess Grace award. I made that call, and this week the package arrived. The box was huge - and full of foam peanuts! Inside the box was another box, with more peanuts. I finally found the porcelain rose taped to the bottom of the inside box, and I understood the need for the extensive packing. The petals are amazingly delicate. Here's a picture of my stitched Lilacs, its ribbons, and the rose.

And last, but the most important news of all (now that I've finally told everyone locally who might be reading this blog). I've got another work in progress: 19 weeks along, 21 to go. Yes, I'm expecting(!), due the first week of March. This is our first, and DH and I are very excited. No, we don't know if "The Kid" (shortened to "TK") is a boy or a girl, and we're planning to be surprised! This news is the main reason I'm taking classes now, because I know I won't be able to for a while. :-) I'm sure finding the time to finish any of these pieces is sure to become difficult though! :-P

Louisville 2008: a cruise, the closing banquet, and stash enhancement

Ok. I'm inexcusably late with my last post about Louisville, but to hide exactly how late (for future readers) and to help with the flow of the blog, I'm antedating this post. :-)

Wednesday of seminar week gave us a break from the longer classes. Some folks went on tours and some die-hards took a single-day class, but I slept in a bit and then went to the merchandise event. I spent most of the day there, helping with my chapter's sale table and figuring out where to spend some stash money. (More on the stash accumulation later!) The picture shows the beginning of the crowds at the event. There were many more people in the room as the day progressed.

Around mid-afternoon, MIL and I walked the half-block over to EGA headquarters. There, we spent quite a bit of time admiring the National Tapestry (which I had been fortunate enough to put a few stitches in when it was being worked). We viewed the National Exhibit, admiring some pieces and puzzling over others, wondering where a needle might actually have been used. Upstairs we enjoyed some of the permanent pieces of the collection, including a wonderful crewel bench embroidered by the master, Audrey Francini. The Tenessee Valley Region also had an exhibit upstairs which had some beautiful pieces.

Wednesday evening was spent on a riverboat cruise. We boarded the Belle of Louisville at 7PM. Dinner (including, of course, incredible fried chicken) was enjoyable despite the lack of air circulation on the second deck. After dinner, most of us escaped the heat by heading up to the upper deck to enjoy the breeze and to watch twilight descend on the Ohio River. Eventually, the boat turned around and headed back to the city. Louisville is beautiful from the river at night! Though my camera doesn't capture night scenes well, the overall impression comes through with a few pictures.






As classes drew to a close on Friday, we all prepared to say goodbye. The ballroom was decorated beautifully for the closing banquet. The banquet was opened with the "Call to the Post" (call to dinner?) performed by the official bugler of Churchill Downs, and then he (the bugler) shared some of his experiences in that post. He closed his speech by playing "My Old Kentucky Home". Though it had absolutely nothing to do with embroidery, it was wonderful to get a taste of Louisville culture through this enjoyable speech.

Now, on to the stash! I was very pleased with the favor from the closing banquet: a beautiful pair of stork scissors with a leather case. I've been stitching for over 15 years, yet never had stork scissors until now!





Between the bookstore, EGA headquarters, and the merchandise event, I picked up several books:

• Ruskin Lace & Linen Work by Elizabeth Prickett. This has been on my wish list for a long time.
• SuZy's Lite Stitches by Suzy Murphy. I'm hoping this will help with some of the painted canvases I struggle with.
• The Art of Teaching Embroidery by Sandy Rogers. I've enjoyed teaching a few projects to my guild chapters, so thought I'd read up on it to see how I can improve.
• Elegance from the Past, which contains instructions to reproduce a pulled-thread piece from EGA's collection.
• The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir. While this novel is not about stitching, this fit in well with the Tudor-Style purse class I was taking.

At the merchandise event, I purchased several small things: a few packs of needles, a collection of various sizes of gold spangles, a pair of extremely sharp scissors from Japan, some new hand lotion, a Brussels lace kit from somebody's stash, and a pair of burling irons (which are wonderful, very fine tweezers - perfect for removing dog hair from projects - believe me - I've tried them already!) I also made one larger purchase: the kit for Joan Thomasson's Czarist Treasures, including the design drawn on congress cloth.

I made a few trips to the seminar boutique over the course of the week. I think Stitcher's Workshop brought their entire shop to Louisville! I combined a search for "new to me" threads with gathering threads for a geometric canvas class scheduled for November.

I really enjoyed my first national seminar! Thanks to all of the EGA volunteers for pulling together a fabulous time.

Good news & bad news

Yes, I know I didn't post as much as I'd intended in Louisville, and I fully plan to still put posts together about my fabulous 4-day class, some of my stash purchases, and some other odds and ends from seminar. I returned home Saturday night, and it's been a fairly emotional week.

Good news or bad news first?

Let's start with the good news, since it's needlework related. A month ago or so, I wrote about sending two pieces to the ANG National Seminar Exhibit in Indian Wells, California. I found out on Sunday (third-hand) that my Lilacs took First Place (!!!!) in the Independent Project, Professional category. Wow! (As to why I'm considered a professional, it's because at one time I was doing some model stitching for a cross-stitch designer, and ANG considers someone a professional if that person ever earned any money doing any needlework, regardless if the pieces being entered are in the same technique.)

It didn't stop there. Apparently the same person who called the person who called me ALSO called our ANG chapter president. I found out this evening at our chapter meeting that the Lilacs also won the Princess Grace Award! I am in complete shock! According to the ANG website,

"The Princess Grace Award may be given to any entry, in any judged category, that is worked entirely in the tent stitch without embellishments such as beads or other attachments, in order to maintain the purity of the stitching technique. The tent stitch is defined as going over one intersection from lower left to upper right with no back stitches, seed stitches, or outline stitches."

On my entry form, I had indicated that this piece could qualify for the award, but I had absolutely NO expectations of winning it! Holy cow!

(And if anybody can confirm this, PLEASE let me know. I'm in a bit of denial!)

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And the bad news (and a rare non-needlework bit of info): Also on Sunday, DH and I turned our male greyhound, Tucker, over to another home. After many, many incidents that indicated Tucker just couldn't continue to stay in a crate when we were at work (the latest happened last week when I was at seminar), we finally had to admit that we couldn't help him live a happy, healthy life.

In the crate, he would tear up any blankets (until we finally purchased a very expensive, guaranteed-not-to-tear dog bed), gnaw on the bars of the crate (breaking several welds and wearing down his teeth), and generally be VERY unhappy for the time we were at work. We just don't have a place to put him where he could be safe out of the crate either, because he has a tendency to eat things that could hurt him, too.

Last Thursday evening, when others were enjoying the auction at seminar, I was on the phone to the leader of our greyhound rescue group explaining all of this, and bawling non-stop.

Tucker had been a part of our lives for over five years, but he has been moved to a new home where the people are home more and have a safe, non-crated area for him (and their other greyhounds) to stay when they aren't home. I'm sure he's pretty bewildered right now, and I tear up a bit each day with missing him, but I know it's for the best. I want to call each day asking how he's doing, but I'm trying to wait until the weekend.

Our other greyhound, Sophie, who was always a bit (ok, a lot) intimidated by him, on the other hand, thinks this is great! She has blossomed in the past few days, and we've learned that perhaps this change is the best for both of them.

The few pictures here are of Tucker on Sunday morning. I'll miss you, Tucker Magoo. :-(

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We now return this blog to its regularly-scheduled (ok, maybe not quite regularly-scheduled) needlework content.

Louisville 2008: Marion Scoular's RSN experience

As promised, here is the picture-heavy post from Marion's lecture. Marion started at the Royal School of Needlework in 1953 when she was just 16. At the time, she was the youngest student ever enrolled. The next three years were spend stitching in the morning and doing art/design activities in the afternoon, except for Thursdays, which were for dressmaking. This curriculum in the school lasted until the mid-60's (if I recall correctly). At the time, the diploma was considered a Master's level degree in art. The certification process is a bit different now, and no longer carries the same weight.

Anyway, on to the pictures!
Each piece they worked was on the right side of the full piece of fabric. On the left side, there were several inches reserved for doodles. Above is one of the doodle areas from Marion's blackwork project. She has these doodles matted for display and reference purposes.

This is the associated blackwork project. The design process sounded interesting, with each student playing with cut paper shapes and gluing them down into different configurations. When it came time to do a new project, the teachers would go through each student's collection of such creations and narrow down the designs to those that would be appropriate for the technique to be worked. After a bit of tweaking and refining, the piece could be stitched (after the doodle was complete for reference).

This is her "basic" whitework/drawn work piece. Sure... basic. Uh huh.

This is the advanced whitework piece. It was really hard to take a good picture of this without casting a shadow. The dove's eyes in the cut portions are about 1.5mm (yes, mm) across.

This was a multi-technique project done in silk. It was fascinating to see the play of light off of this. Above is the close shot of the elephant, and the entire composition is below.
This is a close-up of the edging of the nightie she made in dressmaking class. It's impressive enough without knowing that the entire thing is made of nylon (ugh!), and that the stitching is done with a thread pulled from the same fabric. Rayon's bad enough. Marion's only comment was that nylon is a bit unruly or uncooperative (or some such understatement).

One of the last projects the students worked was ecclesiatical needlework. Above is a close-up of the fully-stitched angel's face. The other angel on the piece was a mirror image, entirely in applique, in different colors. Below is Marion holding the full piece.I hope you enjoyed this abbreviated version of Marion's collection from the RSN. Thank you to Marion for allowing me to post these pictures.

A museum visit

I can't believe I haven't posted since Saturday. I might post a couple of times today and tomorrow, to share the projects I've been working on. But this post is about a museum visit!

On Saturday, my EGA chapter visited a local museum and was treated to a private showing of 40-50 samplers. This is about half of their collection, and they had to get them out of storage. Some of these samplers have not been seen by the public in over 15 years, and most have never been displayed as a museum exhibit, and are not terribly likely to be put on display in the near future. They were great! Those that had not been displayed before were not even under glass, so we had the opportunity to study them closely without worrying about glare. If I were an outsider, I probably would have laughed at 25 women bending over tables, with their hands behind their backs and noses a couple of inches off of whatever was on the table!

While I'm discussing this museum, I have to advertise for it (though I'm completely unaffiliated!). The Strong Museum was started in the early 1980's from the personal collection of Margaret Woodbury Strong. This woman collected thousands of dolls and toys over her lifetime (and a few samplers, apparently, as well).

As an example of Mrs. Strong's collecting skills, one of our members said she had known her from a button collecting club. The curator said they had sold off many of her buttons, but kept a "representative sample" of over 7000 buttons!

Anyway, when I went to the Strong Museum 20 years ago, I just remember cases after cases of dolls. A few years ago, the museum went under a drastic change in mission, and is now known as the Strong National Museum of Play. If you are ever in the Rochester NY area with your kids, you have to take a day (or two) to visit! Oh my gosh! After I had looked at each sampler at least three times, I wandered over to the "Reading Adventureland" exhibit. The best way I can describe it is as a reading playground. There were different sections for various genres: detective stories, fantasy, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, pirate stories, etc. Each section had activities for the kids to try. For example, in the fairy tales section, kids could put on a royal cloak, sit on a throne, make their own crown. In each section, a variety of books were available, to read (while sitting on a throne, if desired!) or to take home, since these were part of the local library system. I got lost in this exhibit for an hour, enjoying all there was to see, and probably would have stayed longer if we didn't have lunch plans! I didn't get to any of the other exhibits, but if they're anything like this, it would take a few visits to get through it all, especially with kids!

Seminar Exhibit - Before and After!

*** Warning - picture intensive post!!! ***

Before - Very Boring:

















After - Fun to browse!

































No other words are needed! :-)

Back from seminar!

Wow, what a trip! Last night I returned from the Mid-Eastern Region EGA seminar in Chautauqua, NY.

My MIL & I left Wednesday morning at 8:30, arriving at Bellinger Hall on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution sometime around noon. We found the room in which the exhibit was to be held, and started labeling the pieces that had already been brought in by our fellow seminar workers. We ordered out for subs for us and for those doing setup of the vendor and registration areas, the opportunity baskets, and classrooms.

At some point we registered, got our room keys, and brought our luggage in. The rooms were not fancy - just dorm rooms with single beds, a small desk and wardrobe for each, and a shared bath for every two rooms. Most people, including us, specified that we wanted a private bath, so, for the most part, only every other room was populated.

By 6:00 PM Wednesday most of the exhibit entries had arrived, and some folks went out to dinner. I joined the crew that shared 6 delivered pizzas! After dinner, four of us went to work setting up the exhibit, and were done by around 9:15. (I'll share before and after pictures tomorrow, since I don't have the camera hooked up right now!) In all, we had about 65 pieces of needlework on display.

On Wednesday night, the bed I occupied was the hardest bed I had ever used. It seemed to me that I didn't sleep much, but I think I just kept waking up - frequently. MIL had brought a pillow from home, and gave me the one on her bed. I ended up sleeping on it, just so my back wouldn't be on the hard bed.

A routine started as of Thursday:

• wake up at six, take turns getting ready (and stitching while the other was doing so).
• breakfast at 7:30 - eating and lots of chatting.
• back to the room to pick up stuff for class at 9.
• At 11:55, run out of class to get the exhibit opened at noon. Coach the three people who signed up to monitor it, and trust that they'll figure out how to take turns monitoring and getting their lunches.
• 12:10 - Go have lunch, and compare notes with people in other classes.
• 1:15 - the exhibit (and the attached vendor area) is supposed to close, provided we can get excited stitchers to finish up purchases and viewing, and find the guy who's supposed to lock everything up. A couple of times I resorted to flickering the lights so people would look at their watches and realize they had 10 minutes to get back to class!
• 1:30-4:30 - back in class.
• 4:45 - repeat the exhibit opening routine, then shop for a bit, and actually take time to look at the exhibit! Once I actually had time for a bit of a walk outside!
  
• 6:00 - exhibit closed again, and we all head to dinner.
• 7:30 - exhibit opens, coach more helpers, etc. I usually headed back to my room for a bit of quiet time!
  
• 9:00 - exhibit closes for the night. Then I could find the ladies from my chapter who tended to meet in somebody's room, with hilarity ensuing! We had about 17 people from our chapter there, and all of them are lots of fun!
• Somewhere around 11:00-12:00 - clean up, change into pj's and tumble into bed.
  

The funny thing was that the bed became more comfortable every night! :-)

As for the classes, they were both great. The sampler class with Catherine Theron was pretty packed, with maybe 17 people. She handled it wonderfully, going over a stitch or two and giving us lots of time to practice and add it to our sampler. We finished going over all of the stitches by 11:00 on Friday, and then we reviewed all the central motifs in the sampler, going over what stitches were used where. Again, she broke this up, going over two to three motifs, then giving us time to stitch before we went on and talked about other motifs. By the end of class on Friday I had the main vine of the border done all the way around - and it met correctly!!!

Saturday and Sunday was Kathy Fenchel's Picnic Hampered! This is another fun piece, with plenty of challenges of its own, but it's a completely different "mood" than the sampler. There were only 6 other people in this class, three of whom were in the sampler class with me. I think we're all having more difficulty with stitching messy, random tree bark than with the detached buttonhole on the sampler! One of the other people in this class was Karen Wojahn, the national president of EGA. She sat next to me, and I was honored to get to know this lovely lady a bit!

Since the opportunity basket drawings were scheduled for lunchtime on Sunday, and we were all going to leave right after class, Saturday evening was the last exhibit showing. A few people in Studio Time were going to take down the exhibit on Sunday. As I was shutting things down Saturday, the vendors were starting to pack up. One of the vendors had brought 10 items to the exhibit, and requested hers back. I pulled all of hers, and mine, and MIL's, just to get them out of the way. Then, the owner of the pegboards we had used decided she wanted those back now, so I pulled the rest of the items off the pegboards. I was reluctant to leave a partially-disassembled exhibit open as the vendors were carting out their things, so I found a few more exhibitors in the dining room and offered to give them their pieces at that time. I found the ladies from my chapter, and got those out, too. So, out of 19 exhibitors, I distributed pieces back to all but 4 on Saturday night. A glass of wine later, and I slept the night through!

I took today as a vacation day, figuring that I'd need a day to recover, and I'm sure glad I did! Seminar was great, but it was also very tiring!

Happy Birthday to me...

Yup. It's that day. My company has given us our birthdays off this year, so I've been home all day but haven't picked up a needle! I've been working on stuff for the exhibit and washing clothes to go to seminar.

I'm so excited! This is my first seminar, regional or otherwise! I went to CATS a few years ago, but really want the longer classes that seminar offers. I'm taking two 2-day classes: Examplar IV from Catherine Theron and Picnic Hampered! by Kathy Fenchel. Plus with the exhibit, boutique, a teacher's showcase one evening and merchandise night another, it will be 4 days of nothing but needlework! I'll be back Sunday night, but I'm taking Monday off from work to recover! :-)

Anyway, when I've found some time to pick up a needle, I've been working on the Gay Ann Rogers mystery piece. I finished the bedroom, and have been plugging away on some of the borders.

I love the bedroom - this is the only time I've been able to say I stitched an entire sampler in under an hour!

I found out this week that some of the Jim Wurth kits for May will be shipped late. Since I was one of the later people to sign up for the series, my guess is that my kit will be delayed. With two new projects from seminar, though, I don't think I'll miss it too much!

I probably won't get a chance to post tomorrow morning before I leave. Stay tuned for a full seminar report on Monday!

Busy, busy! And silk gauze progress...

Well, this has been the longest gap between postings since I started the blog. I've been busy with stitching-related stuff, but haven't been stitching much. On Wednesday I leave for our EGA region seminar. I'm the exhibit chair, so this week has been crazy with prep work, printing placards, making sure I have all the right forms, etc.

Yesterday was my cousin's wedding (see this post for the item I stitched for the couple!). I saw them this morning for a brunch, but I don't think they had opened their gifts yet.

Today I picked up one counted canvas piece from my LNS/framer. I finished Silk Pageantry, an ANG GCC by Kay Cline, several months ago, but just had it framed so I can put it in the seminar exhibit. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't turn out very well since the piece is still in the clear plastic bag from the framer. Since I intend to transport it to seminar that way, I don't want to take it out of the bag. I promise to share a pic when I get back from seminar!

Since I saw Mom at the brunch and she didn't feel up to anything else today, after I returned from the framer I did some work out in the yard. I then did some "silk gauze gardening" while watching the Yankees game. I almost have one whole blackberry leaf!
I'm not sure if I like the lightest green. It seems a bit too yellow. I have to revisit my stash of Eterna silks to see if I can find something light with a bit more blue in it.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there!

Artistry in Thread Exhibit

Yesterday and today, the local EGA and ANG chapters had a joint exhibit at the Artistry in Thread festival held by the women's council of the Rochester Museum & Science Center. Our goal in doing this is simply to encourage membership in the guilds. In past years, we've been only moderately successful, perhaps gaining a handful of members over the course of 4 years.

To try to improve this rate, we decided not to only show our best works, which seems to intimidate more hopeful stitchers, rather than encourage them. Instead, this year our exhibit showed lots of group projects, both completed and in progress. We displayed hand-painted canvases with the threads intended to be used on them, with stitch books that might be used as reference. Visitors could look over the shoulders of several members who were stitching on their current WIPs. We gave away old copies of guild magazines (NeedleArts for EGA, and NeedlePointers for ANG). There were piles of enticing threads scattered about. In short, the exhibit was a welcoming display, showing that stitching is about the process, not just the finished piece.

It seemed to work! We had a lot of interest, and handed out many fliers with meeting information and membership applications for both groups. We'll see how many of those end up with guest visits and possibly new members. I'm encouraged.