Hi Everyone —

Before I get into today’s events, I thought I would share with you my end of Tuesday progress on Tudor Garden!

Tudor Garden — Day 2

I venture to say that I would have had a bit more done if I hadn’t missed a whole stitching session for a conference call!  This was a fun stitch and as a result of being in the trial group for this distance learning, I earned a free registration for next year’s seminar!  Good thing I planned to go to New Orleans anyway!

Wednesday is always one of my favorite days at seminar — it’s tour day!  Unfortunately, ANG has not had a lot of people sign up for their sponsored tours which I think is a shame since these are both a cultural experience in the seminar region and also a great chance to meet stitchers from other parts of the country!  So, this morning, I boarded a bus with about a dozen other stitchers and we drove about 1.5 hours to the Hopsewee Plantation for a Tour and Tea.

Hopsewee Plantation House!

The Hopsewee Plantation House dates to the 1700’s, before the Revolutionary War.  The owner at the time was a delegate to the Continental Congress and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  When the house was built, the area was known for growing rice and the rice plantation owners were quite prosperous.  They kept slaves and I was able to walk through one of the slave houses on the plantation.  I tried to imagine what it was like to live there, but I couldn’t.

The plantation house itself is small (by cotton standards) — four rooms on the first floor and four rooms on the second floor.  Each room had at least four windows and breezeways connected the rooms to allow some minimal cooling of the house.  Many of the windows and some of the furniture is original to the house.  Today’s owners still live in the house and maintain its charm while still finding a place for their computers and big screen TV!  It really was special to know that you were touring someone’s home!

Our tour was extra special because it was conducted by the previous owner’s daughter — she grew up living in the house and had many wonderful stories to tell us!  I very much enjoyed hearing about a prior matriarch of the house trying to move a piece of furniture through a door.  When it wouldn’t fit, she took an axe to the door sill!  Our guide learned this from a family member of another former owner who happened to come on one of her tours!!  How fun is that?

The grounds were beautifully kept and I took several pictures of especially wonderful foilage.

A Coleus — I wonder if it is related to the Croton from my Saturday and Sunday class?

An unusual and colorful mushroom!

I have no idea what these berries are, but aren’t they luscious in color?

The tea house is on the property but in a separate building.  We had three pots of different tea blends, cucumber and boursin cheese sandwiches, quiche, salmon mousse on water crackers, curried chicken mousse on ginger snaps, and mozzerella, pesto, and tomato on meltaway crackers!  Then they served your choice of two of three kinds of scones!  We thought we were finished but then came dessert:  cheesecake, no-bake chocolate cake, lemon tarts, and a chocolate covered strawberry!  What a feast!

Tomorrow we will brace for Hurricane Joaquin!

Cheers!  Rosie

We started day 2 of Creative Collage this morning with a discussion of threads (which are made up of fibers) by Suzanne Howren. What a wealth of knowledge she has in terms of different types of threads and the full range of available threads for needlepoint.

She and Tony Minieri then turned us over to our canvases to begin stitching. While they each provided us with a stitch guide, the goal of this class was to figure out for ourselves what stitches to use in different areas to make it our own. They gave us a wide variety of threads in our kits so we had a lot of flexibility in what we did.

Using the many ideas and techniques they discussed with us over the 2 days, it was still difficult for me to decide what to do. I realized I still think in terms of rather simple stitches and do not always think about breaking some areas into smaller blocks that could use some combination stitches. However, I’m realizing more of what I need to do and, of course, practice makes perfect.

Tony and Susan were both extremely helpful in getting me to flesh out my ideas and to help me better understand how to see an area as well as decide what weight thread was appropriate.

While it doesn’t look like I accomplished much, I did flesh out lots of ideas, ripped out a bit, and experimented a bit on the doodle canvas.

Creative Collage – Day 2 progress

I wish I’d taken pictures of Suzanne’s and Tony’s stitched canvases in case i need ideas in the future!

Overall, this was a wonderful class where I learned a lot, got outside my comfort zone, and expanded my needlepoint skill set. Suzanne Howren and Tony Minieri are excellent teachers with a lot of brilliant ideas and needlework knowledge.

This evening, I decided I wasn’t very hungry and wanted to see the Myrtle Beach Boardwalk, which is supposedly rated #2 or #3 in the country, so I took a long walk up and along the boardwalk. Having grown up spending summers on south Jersey beaches, I’m not sure I’d even begin to compare it to them! Still it was fun to see it, although I was definitely feeling the humidity on my way back.

Myrtle Beach Boardwalk

Tomorrow I’ll be heading home, hopefully after visiting Pawley’s Island in the morning.

Diane

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I took a look at the classes being offered next year at New Orleans and there are some good ones. I had hoped I would find only a couple of classes that I liked and could spend more time working on finishing one project instead of sharing the time among several projects. Maybe that will come sometime in the future, but not next year! There are some really good classes with some excellent teachers.

Yesterday was the first day of my first choice for the whole seminar, Copper Line with Sue Reed from Peabody, MA. I had taken a short 1/2 day program with her right after the seminar in Anaheim at the San Bernadino chapter meeting. I knew then that if I saw a class of hers I really liked, I would take it as she is an excellent teacher. She has the patience needed to spend time with someone who is having difficulty doing a stitch until they can do it on their own. This is an encore class first done about ten years ago. I was able to get in the class because someone dropped out and my name was at the top of the waiting list.

Day one

I obviously did not post last night so to continue with the class, day two was another good day with Sue Reed. It is often amazing the little tidbits you pick up from a teacher as well as new stitches. One of the things I learned today about Smyrna stitches is that the placement of the top stitch depends in part on its location. If you have a row of Smyrnas the horizontal line is enhanced if the top stitch is placed horizontally as well. In a column it is better to have the top stitch vertical. Who knew?

A pretty stitch we did today was a scotch stitched with several tied stitches in it. The ties were a metallic adding a bit of bling or sparkle to the section. For some reason the photo becomes distorted when I try to insert it so I will leave it out.

Sue

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For love of root vegetables! Jennifer Riefenberg has designed a series of 3 pieces around carrots, radishes and beets. She has taught Carrots at many stitching events and Radishes is being introduced here at Seminar. Beets will be offered next year.

I am one of the fortunate stitchers to get into this class as it went to lottery and many who had requested it did not get in. Jennifer is a wonderful teacher, generous with her time. Also very organized – the kit for this class is an indicator.

As you can see, we worked on two of the three radishes on Day 1. Day 2 will bring stump work on the leaves – this is a technique I have never used before so I have some trepidation about how my leaves will come out. However, the three dimensional effect will be great. There will be shadow leaves stitched into the canvas and the stump work leaves attached to it.

Day 1 progress

Well, off to see what needlepoint adventures today brings!

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Today was Day 1 of Suzanne Howren's and Tony Mineri's Creative Collage class. I have really been looking forward to this class as many of you know since I love working on painted canvases using my own stitch guides. However, my skills in this area were very limited.

While the day started with receiving our canvas and threads. We examined the canvas as well as several others in terms of which elements were in the foreground, middle ground, and background. This is important in determining the weight and colors of stitches and threads to use. What became apparent to me is that where items sit is different than the focal point of the canvas.

Next we were given graph paper with a teardrop and another with an irregular figure (think amoeba!) and had to figure out what stitches were most appropriate for each figure that would be consistent with its direction while emphasizing its shape and direction. This took a lot of trial and error, erasing, color pencils, etc. who knew how difficult yet how obvious once you found an appropriate stitch. We then played around a lot with trellis type stitches. The big aha for me was you don't have to treat it as a trellis – it's a style of stitch combinations. You can provide as much or as little coverage as appropriate for the area of canvas you're covering. This is a great technique for covering variable colored areas where the color is not intricate to the picture. We finished the day talking about background stitches and threads.

As you can see, we spent the day using our brains to figure out the best way to work with a painted canvas and did no stitching. There was so much information shared which triggered so many ideas that I was exhausted!

This was my first class with either Suzanne or Tony. They are a wealth of knowledge and ideas. They readily answered questions, eyed our ideas and helped us flesh them out to do what we wanted. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Diane

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