When ANG posted this piece as a Workshop by Mail last fall, I knew that wanted to stitch it. I loved the design as well as the flow of exciting colors. Reading a description I realized that you could also get it kitted with the threads by the designer Ann-Marie Anderson-Mayes of Australia. I looked at her website, Beautiful Stitches, and along with several other members of NJNA, ordered some threads. I ordered two complete kits of threads and picked the most vibrant of the two. Yesterday I started to stitch. Oh, what fun and what beautiful threads to work with and what clear true colors.

Here is my beginning with the threads I am using. Isn’t the overdye beautiful?

Sue

The first lesson of the ANG virtual Seminar class began last Monday. We already had our kit and instructions; what arrived on Monday in my computer mailbox was the additional notes that usually are verbal when a class begins. The instructions for the first week covered the land portion of the piece. The written instructions were very complete, what was added in the notes was icing on the cake! The stitching was fun to do because the picture unfolded quickly (at least where Needlepoint is involved)!

Here is the land portion.

The Bargello on the left establishes the hillside. Above that you can see the sunflowers stitched as eyelets with their green stems, a diagonal satin stitch. Below the Bargello, you can see the wildflowers which are stitched as a composite stitch made as a diagonal Gobelin . Separating the wildflowers and the Bargello is the soil stitched as free-form eyelets.

On the right side you can see pine trees, a slanted Gobelin, with trunks, a VanDyke stitch over a Fyre Werks for some glisten. Above the trees for the mountainside is an overdye Diagonal Roumanian (fun to stitch but a bear to remove!). The base is a Sprat’s Head to anchor that side.

I am ready for Lesson 2 on Monday! (Can you tell this is a delight to stitch??)

Sue

ANG decided to postpone the seminar this year in Tucson for two years, but offered a virtual seminar instead. I signed up for two classes and the kit for one of my classes arrived in the mail yesterday. I knew it would arrive any day so I kept checking for the mail to see if it had come. It finally arrived at its usual time, just before 3:00, and there was a package!

Our instruction via email from Wendy Moore was to let her know when the package arrived and the contents checked. I opened the package and saw this beautiful turquoise painted canvas with slight variations in color–she had said that there would slight differences but it takes a careful eye to see that. Then this large package of threads divided into smaller bags, a bag with four needles and a needle threader–do you ever have enough needle threaders?

Wendy Moore’s class, Sunrise Reflections, will be taught in four sessions separated by a week. Each session addresses an area of the design. The threads are separated into bags for each section of the canvas which is in one session. There are numerous threads used and since many of these are more expensive threads, they are cut to the amount needed and put on thread drops. The Land section has 15 threads on green drop cards in a bag. The Sun has 8 threads on yellow cards. There are 9 threads on blue cards for the Water section and the bag for the Sky has 4 threads on lavender cards.

The direction sheets already had holes punched in the, so I immediately put them in a binder and double checked that all the pages were there. Today I will attach my canvas to the stretcher bars and be ready for the first session on September 7! I love this virtual seminar since traveling at this time is not what I am comfortable doing!

Threads and canvas

As a present to myself on Christmas Day, I was all set to begin The Neighborhood, a counted design that Sue R introduced me to in 2018. When I saw her completed piece, I knew I wanted to build, errr, stitch, my own Neighborhood. At first I thought that I would change the house colors but then decided not to mess with an already good blend of colors. As I finished each house, I felt as though I had actually built it myself and imagined a family living there. Linda M found a roof stitch in this design that you will see in the May June issue of Needlepointers. This piece was finished and in the hands of Rob at Framed Image by the end of February. With Rosie and Rob’s help in selecting the materials and Rob’s excellent work it is now ready to pick up…eventually. It brought joy while stitching it as well as the joy I will have seeing the completed piece hanging at home.

The Neighborhood by Susan Jones of Finger Step Designs