Even though I have spent most of the last week at home, it has been productive as I have spent time stitching as I listened to audio books. I was able to complete American Mosaic, a map of the United Stares. It is the class that both Heidi and I took in Chicago this past August. It was a piece I thoroughly enjoyed seeing come to life. Seeing Heidi's completed inspired me to get back to it.

American Mosaic

I also added a couple of rivers that were not on the original which had the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. I added the Delaware River for New Jersey, my home state, and the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington for a few wonderful vacations spent out there.

That is three completed seminar pieces and two to go!

Sue

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This was a class that I took at the EGA Seminar in Phoenix last October. Sedona: Cathedral Rock, a class taught by Lois Kershner based on a photo that she took several years ago.

Sedona: Cathedral Rock

Shading was done in a variety of ways. The river used thread blending as well as overdyed threads. The ripples were created by a second layer of the same overdye as the clouds as well as a strand of Bijoux. The red rocks were created by both several different overdyed threads as well as blending two or three different threads. The clouds and the sky were all stitched in a Gobelin stitch and where they were started and ended created clouds, some white and some light blue. After SOTM on Saturday, I only had the sky left to finish stitching and those long stitches covered the canvas quickly! Last to do was apply the painted ultra suede rocks in the lower left. That was difficult because it was hard to get the needle through side of the ultra suede. Good thing that the hemostat is a part of my needlework tool kit! Still have three more seminar pieces to complete!

Sue

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Today I drove down to Woodlawn with ten Frankies wrapped and ready to enter in the Woodlawn month long needlework exhibit. It was a very interesting process to enter a piece (or many) Into the exhibit. I could not enter all of them at the same time; each person's piece or pieces were done separately so that the line of people waiting to be processed did not get stopped at the first step. The first woman checked the piece and the entry form. Our work was called “canvas” not needlepoint and the type was multiple stitches. On to the next station with the entry form, the piece and the entry fee. This woman assigned the entry with a number, recorded the number in a notebook along with the entrant's name as well as something descriptive about the piece. With Linda's and Rosie's pieces–two each–she distinguished each by color. This is also the station where the fee was collected. She then passed the sheet on to the next woman who typed the information–name, number, type of work–on a laptop and then printed it on cards: a receipt card and an entry card. On to station four where the frame was examined carefully and any mark or discoloration was noted on the receipt as well as the measurements of the frame. The last woman gave me the receipt as well as a free admission card for that person.

It was time consuming, but the women doing the work as well as the others working for the exhibit were so nice and helpful. I did not need to go to the end of the line each time I got a new piece out of one of my bags or boxes, but was permitted to cut in line. They found a place for me to leave the box and bags as I went through the stations. Each one expressed how happy they were that we had thought to exhibit at Woodlawn and hoped that each of us could come down to see the exhibit. With each piece they would exclaim over the color choices and how beautiful, each looked. Each said it would be hard to pick their favorite color. After the last entry, I sat with the woman in charge of getting together the background information for the guides to have. She took the sheet that I had written and recorded all the entry numbers. If someone asks a guide about all the pieces exhibited by New Jersey Needle Artists, the guide will have more information to give. They hope that it will be possible to exhibit all of these in one room.

I will say, I am happy the weather was good and the traffic nothing out of the ordinary for the drive down and back. I came home with a trunk filled with all the wrappings to give Diane for her trip down to pick the pieces up in April. I hope that many of you will be able to make the trip down to Woodlawn to see the entire exhibit.

Sue

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I didn’t intend to jump ahead of the group but after putting the canvas on stretcher bars, 17×17, I realized I wasn’t going to be happy doing this as a travel piece. So I thought I would check out block number one and that led to block number two and three and four and I couldn’t stop myself!

There was a sense of discovery associated with each new block.  Even the repeat areas created a sense of excitement as to how it would add to the overall design.  I was a little disappointed with the bottom row.  I found these blocks to be lazier than the earlier ones and block 44 is charted one thread off, some stitchers will be challenged finding a correct way to stitch this.  I made a mistake early in the row and was one thread long……which gave me the correct number of threads for that block!  Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!

Rona

I managed two finishes this week in between wrapping presents and generally getting ready for the holidays.  Fortunately, Nora has taken over the responsibility for much of the decorating around the house so I didn’t have as much to do this year.  I did get to bake some cookies this year – probably the first time in at least a dozen years.  I did also manage some stitching in between the festivities!  As a result I have two finishes under my belt.

The first is A Different View, our 2014 Stitch-of-the-Month project, by Kurdy Biggs.  I added Swarovski crystal bicones and Mill Hill crystal bugle beads.  I opted for the crystal as I really didn’t want to try to figure out how to distribute various colored beads in the design.  I am pleased with the outcome – just enough bling without being too overwhelming.

This is the overall result followed by some close-ups of the individual octagons.

I had a great time stitching this piece – the stitches were challenging and picking my own colors was a great experience.

My second finish was Alicia, a Tony Minieri design, that Gone Stitching in Bergenfield offered as a class entitled “Time to Make the Donuts”.  I didn’t get the connection until it was pointed out that the colorway designated as the original reminded everyone of Dunkin Donuts (duh!).  It reminds me of Rainbow Sherbet and so the piece will be designated for summer display.  I did not manipulate the Watercolours too much – just a bit around the outside row so that I got a pretty good distribution of colors.

I am now trying to get my temporary stitching room (aka the guest bedroom) somewhat organized.  I will be starting a new class at The Edwardian Needle in early January – Tony Minieri’s Out of Africa as well as our Serengeti project later in the month.  And I have a large project for a gift in late May that I must finish.  So I need to get canvases, threads and instructions into project bags so that I can easily find them.  I think that will occupy me for the next few days.

I wish you all a very happy and healthy new year!

There were only four of us that were able to make the December meeting as trips and other events interfered. The four of us did spend a number of hours stitching and beads were added to both Robin and Linda's canvases. I expect that you may see them completed at the next NJNA meeting this coming Wednesday. As we did last December, we had a potluck luncheon this year as well. You will soon be able to find the recipes for Robin's pear and grape slaw, Linda's wild rice dish, Diane's roasted vegetables, Sue's maple glazed salmon, and Sue's chocolate angel food cake with a chocolate honey glaze on our website.

Doesn't this look tasty?

Join NJNA next year for SOTM!

Sue

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I really must apologize … I meant to blog about my class at The Enriched Stitch in Wilton, CT over the weekend.  But, as usual, I got involved in other things.

Saturday, if you remember, was a horribly rainy day.  Driving up to Wilton was something of a challenge but the class at the end of the trip was well worth it.  The shop is on two floors with downstairs for canvases, threads and all of the accessories you can imagine while upstairs is devoted to classroom space.   I of course didn’t take pictures of the shop (I seem to have some sort of phobia about taking shop pictures), but you can view some photos on the shop’s website www.enrichedstitch.com.

Once we all dried out, the fun began.  Mary Susan is a wonderfully patient teacher not only sharing her thought process in picking the stitches and threads, but demonstrating stitches as we went along.  We started on the door wreath, which is stitched in Colonial Knots with Painters Thread.  My knots are generally somewhat haphazard – sometimes beautiful and sometimes pretty pathetic.  Mary Susan demonstrated (repeatedly) how to make perfect Colonial Knots and then we practiced with some embroidery floss before tackling the actual wreath.  Painters Thread is also something I’ve never used, so right out of the box I learned a new technique and used a new thread.  Painters Thread has gorgeous names – we are using Turner for the wreath and Kandinsky for the sky – the package says it is a YLI Ribbon Floss Shimmer dyed thread.

Here you can see the beginnings of my wreath.  We jumped around with the Colonial knots so that the color would be more random.

We then moved on to the moon which is stitched with a Threadworx Fine Braid.  The stitch is very interesting – eyelet stitches of different shapes and sizes.  We all thought the eyelets looked like the craters of the moon; it’s a very interesting effect. Next up was the snow on the roof.  I posted the full canvas picture on Facebook and the stitch for the snow got a number of comments.  It is a Diamond Pavilion Stitch in Silk N Colors Mint Frost with a Walnetto in Sparkle Braid (thank you, Michael Boren and Carole Lake!) in between and a Myuki Bead in the center of the Walnetto.  Absolutely fabulous!

We talked about the various other stitches and then wrapped up the afternoon working on the sky.  It is a Bargello pattern done in five different threads as well as an empty row.  The order of the threads varies throughout the sky.  Some of my fellow stitchers do not care for empty canvas so they will eliminate the empty row.  We were given a pattern to follow but I went out on a limb and actually developed a random pattern.  The compensation around the lettering was discussed at length and I will approach it with caution.

Here you can see my roof snow and the sky pattern as well as the canvas at the end of the class.

Mary Susan had her canvas finished as a stand-up music box.  The finished product is gorgeous and such a clever way to finish a piece.  I am probably going to have mine finished similar to an ornament so that it can be displayed on an easel. I know you are all shocked that I’m not thinking about framing it!

Here are pictures of the music box.  Isn’t that finishing just fabulous?  You can buy the music box through the internet so you get whatever music you like.

I am taking some time off over the holidays and I hope to catch up on some of my in-progress projects before I get started on more new projects in the New Year.  And so maybe you will see some progress on this (and other) projects in 2015. Until then …

Here’s the Wildflowers colorway on pink canvas

Mariposa — Cherries colorway

The stitches go pretty quickly and are fun to do. I do like the Cherries on pink canvas. I also finished the Wildflowers colorway on pink canvas — it is very soft and reminds me of the frosting on a wedding cake. Can’t figure out how to add a second picture so I’ll do another blog entry.