This design by Diane Herrmann is the sky line of Chicago from Lake Michigan at night. When we got to class this morning, we each got a line drawn canvas of the entire piece and a bag of fibers most of which are DMC. Diane told us in our teacher letter that she would show us an easy way to store all these threads if we brought a kitchen towel with us to class. Here is what she showed us to do.

We placed all our threads on the towel in whatever arrangement we wished. Folded the sides over the threads and rolled it up into a small bundle! How neat is that for the number of threads we are using! There are also some other threads such as rayon floss, Twinkle, Kreinik and others.

We began stitching the Sears Tower. The open spaces will be in a lighter color for the lights. The top of the tower has no lights because there are no windows. It stores water to be used in case of fire. The second building we worked on to the right is the John Hancock building–the roof top bar would be well lit at night, wouldn’t it? Then we began on the diamond in the Diamond building. This is where the rayon floss came in with the yellow outline. Diane gave us two tips which made working with the floss so much easier. She had us cut a length of about one yard, strand it, and dampen each strand then laying it out to dry. We threaded two strands in the needle, put the needle in the middle and knotted the four ends together. We used an away waste knot to secure it. We had a diagram to follow to make the outline and three small hash lines on the canvas indicating where we should go. It really worked! And what life it gives the outline. The inside is being filled in with basketweave using the thread Twinkle–rayon with a filament. I am loving the class. There are eleven of us with ten tables for students and excellent lighting. Couldn’t ask for a better setup. We shouldn’t be interrupted either as our classroom. Is one of the most remote.