Author Archives: jawilliams4

Jun13

New Project, Anyone?

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If anyone is a fan of geometrics and/or Gay Ann Rogers designs, and is in need (!) of another project, she is offering a new design called “Mystery in St. Tropez.” It’s not a mystery in the sense we normally see — where you don’t know what you’re going to get in the end until you get there — but is a geometric with some interchangeable parts, so every piece is likely to be a bit different. In addition to the main piece, she has two ornaments which would be good for trying out color schemes if you decide to choose your own. If you don’t want to choose your own, Needle in a Haystack is kitting up 16 different sets of threads.

I have to confess…I’ve ordered the instructions already (only available until close of business on 6/15). Anybody want to join me? Go to gayannrogers.com to see some of the options and to order the instructions. She also has a link to the Needle in a Haystack website for ordering threads.

Jun3

Another Finish

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For the past month I’ve been working on Toni Gerdes’s “Klimt Kimono” through CyberPointers, and I finished it yesterday! It was fun to stitch…the most difficult part was keeping track of the floss threader, the re-purposed tool for getting the gold gimp thread used for the tree branches through enlarged holes in the canvas. 🙂 I dropped it several times and thought I was in trouble, until I discovered that a flashlight helped to locate it against the dark tweedy background of the carpet where I was stitching.

I have a partially-finished Wright Kimono in my stash, and I’m going to be doing the O’Keeffe Kimono as part of the virtual ANG Seminar, so I guess I have to stop saying that “I’m not really a kimono person”!

jill-finished

Apr29

Another COVID Finish

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This piece is David McCaskill’s “Warmth of Color” that appeared in the January/February 2020 NeedlePointers. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to stitch it, and immediately started gathering supplies…good thing! Orange isn’t usually my favorite, but for some reason this just called out to me.

It’s been a lot of fun to stitch (a good companion to my operas 🙂 and I’ve learned some things. I’d never stitched on dyed canvas before, so that was interesting…Had to really pay attention when putting the canvas on the stretchers to make sure I didn’t stretch it out of whack…and had to be careful of my tension when stitching.

warmth-finished

Three pieces started, three pieces finished!

Mar30

Another Start

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I’m still watching operas every day…plenty of stitching time! I’ve started something new. The pillow on my regular stitching chair is literally falling apart, so I’m doing a wool basketweave lumbar pillow… It’s easy stitching while I’m trying to read the subtitles on my laptop…this past week was Wagner week, and my German is just barely above non-existant. Now in addition to knowing how to say, “What is your name?” and “I don’t speak German,” I know how to say “toad.” Should come in really handy.

acorn pillow start

Mar19

My Viral Stitching

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Each morning I have been watching operas streaming free on metopera.org — and stitching. You may remember my completed ice skating polar bear — now I have a zebra in boots and a flap hat. See a theme? So far, Carmen, La Bohème, and Il Trovatore have gotten me this far:

zebra progress 1000x

Aug17

Mt. Whitney Waterfall

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My first class ever with Lois Kershner, and it was wonderful! The piece is a photograph she took of a waterfall at Mt. Whitney, transferred to Congress cloth, and then stitched. LOTS of detail, and choices to be made about where stitched areas start and stop, and a fair amount of the dreaded random placement of things…think I’m getting over the all-too-common fear of random!

Lois is a wonderful teacher and her directions are wonderful, some of the best I’ve ever seen. I wish there had been more than two days for this class so I could have kept on stitching…it always seems like you get such a tiny amount done in class! But I have no doubt that I’ll be finishing this one. She also demonstrated the process of doing the photos transfer onto the canvas, so that we might try it with our own photos.

Here’s what my piece looks like after two days…