For the stitch retreat before Seminar, I started a nightlight for my cousin's first grandchild expected in January 2016. Well, the little girl arrived January 25 so …. The pressure was on to finish the project. The stitching was finished so I had to tackle turning the canvas into a shade.

The canvas was sold as a package with the light so I had the major parts. I had a consult with a kind and generous expert (Sue C.) and some input from the internet – what did we ever do before?

Here is the finished nightlight which I will send to the new parents. Hope they like it.

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Hi Everyone —

Today was the last day of seminar stitching!

I made some progress on Starfire, but I also did a lot of backward stitching as well!  Some people in our class are almost finished stitching this, but I had two conference calls and all that ripping out to slow down my progress!

Starfire — Day 2

My threads for Starfire were more pastel than others in the class — this gives the piece a very different look and feel.  I may restitch a few areas with a darker thread so that the blackwork areas can be better seen against the white canvas!

We have been getting a lot of rain — so much so that this morning both the hotel wireless system and Verizon went out for a while — apparently two cell towers were flooded!  I’m back on line now and that is such a relief!  Sue and I have been packing our bags and we hope to get most of the car packed tonight after banquet so that we can get an early start in the AM.  We hope to get as far as Winchester, VA tomorrow!

It’s been a fun and exhausting week filled with good friends, good food, beautiful projects, and fond memories!

Thanks for letting us share our experiences with you!

Cheers, Rosie

Toni Gerdes designed a beautiful kimono filled with rays similar to the rays on the Japanese rising sun flag. When I first saw it last year, it was the rays that impressed me. I selected to do this on the pewter canvas with the accent color teal. The remaining threads are shades of grey as well as an almost white. Aside from some blue Bijoux for glitz the other threads are all silk. As usual, Toni has a visual table of contents–a drawing of the piece with the area and page in each section. This makes it fast and easy to select what page you are looking for. We worked today primarily on learning the stitches for all the rays in the bottom portion of the kimono and one ray in the sleeve. We had lots of stitching time to work on each portion. For me that means I can get all the loose threads completed and tied off at least at same point in class.

By the time that class had finished today, we had worked on each of the different rays making sure we understood how each stitch would fit in the ray. The only portion that we did not begin was the beading for the color. Toni's explanation was so clear that it should not be difficult. The kimono has some beads trailing done the rays in a random pattern. We all know that asking needlepointers to do something random places a heavy load on us. Toni showed us random: imagine a playground with second graders out there playing and you are watching from above. Here are three girls giggling together over here. Further away is the new girl standing alone watching everyone. Over there are two boys kicking a ball and in another area a group of kids are playing softball with several clustered around home plate and others a bit scattered. That explanation made random clear to me! Thank you, Toni, for that story and visualization!

Empire of the Sun

One of the women in class had a neat Ott light that was not available at one of our favorite stores for Ott lights. She purchased it at an electronic store. It weighed less than three pounds, folded flat, with a power cord. It had three kinds of lights and different intensities. On the arm it had a clock, calendar and thermometer–our classroom was 70 degrees.

Ott light

This class was a perfect ending for the seminar. New Orleans, here we come!

Sue

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Those of us from NJNA who are attending the seminar were delighted with next year's offering. It is designed by our own Susan Hoekstra! (We still claim ownership although Susan has moved to Maine.). The design is called “Feuilles d'ananas, a Study in Values”. The layout is similar to a pineapple quilt block and the title means pineapple leaves. Susan stitched hers in different values of gold ranging from very light to very dark. The threads look like they would be floss or silk, (maybe Splendor would have the range needed) with some Kreinik and a few beads. It appears as though you would be working out from the center of the design and adding layers each month. I think it would be a fun piece to stitch and to see what happens as different stitchers use a different family of thread values. (Pictures are not permitted in the display area.)

Sue

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We had a great time stitching on Patches, the Patchwork Penguin. He will be beautiful done in shades of blue, purple and black. Debbie Fourney has little hats to dress him for different seasons – could be fun to see what I can come up with.

He now has two blue eyes so he doesn’t look so blank.

Sadly, today is our last day in Myrtle Beach. The time has flown by with three classes, shopping, feasting and beach time (before the storms). I will be leaving tomorrow morning at a very early hour so I can get back to NJ by the evening. My hope is that the rain will not be too bad and that it will keep some of the crazies off the road. Well, I can hope!

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