Tag Archives: Nancy Cucci

Day 1 of Sisters by Nancy Cucci

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Did you think I made a mistake?  Yes, this is my second class with Nancy at this seminar as these were my two favorite pieces of the offerings that I saw last year.  Nancy told us a story of visiting her best childhood friend, who had remained a lifelong friend, a few years ago in Iowa, half a continent away from where Nancy lived.  While seeing her friend, they visited the friend’s sister where Nancy saw a metal wall sculpture of interlocking squares that she liked.  A photo of this led her to the eventual design of this piece.  The name comes from the association of her friend, the photo at the friend’s sister’s home and Nancy’s feeling that her best friend was like a sister to her.  I like the story behind this beautiful design.

This piece of peach, aqua, and grey blocks is interesting as you will eventually see because all the small units are the same in each block but rotated.  We learned all but one component of the block that is foremost in the design today so we can transfer that knowledge to the remaining blocks when we return home.


Each section has beads that will be added and the missing block on the right will be just beads and stitched when we are fresh tomorrow morning.  I opted to wait until I am home to stitch the beads in the other sections.  Doesn’t this look like a pieced quilt block?  Nancy explained that this was her concept of the overall blocks, so there are no borders within the block but there is a Kreinik double border around it.  This block has two shades of peach as well as a Kreinik and a variety of beads coming.  I am looking forward to more stitching on it tomorrow.

Sue

Day 3 of For the Love of Chocolate

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Although you cannot see much progress on the canvas, there were several new techniques we covered today.img_0116
We started the day working on the cone for the ice cream cone beginning at the bottom of the cone to get a straight run up those diagonal cashmere stitches.  There will be three Hershey kisses in the band to the right in red, silver and the completed one, pink stitched in shiny Kreinik (HL).  Below that is a continuum of chocolate working in from the outside with dark chocolate, through milk chocolate to almost white chocolate in the middle.  The empty blocks include a chocolate  coated strawberry and a box of four See’s truffles–can you guess that Nancy is from California where See’s chocolate is king?  I began the heart chocolate to the right which will have dark chocolate and a decoration of white on it all in beads.  It is another box worked best from the bottom up.

Directly below the heart is an empty box which will eventually have my name or initials–same number in both–and the year of completion.  This is accomplished by the dimple effect–starting and stopping diagonal stitches so that dimples form showing the letters.  As all the stitches go from top to bottom and there is no backstitching, some planning must be involved–I am still at the planning stage and may be there for awhile!

This class was fun and enjoyable, and this is a project I am excited to finish hopefully before the end of the year as I have diagrammed 2016 and not 2017!  Two days away from stitching and then on to another Nancy Cucci class.

Sue

For the Love of Chocolate 

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I have just completed Day 2 of Nancy Cucci’s “For the Love of Chocolate” with one more day to go. Looking at the canvas and what I have done, it is hard to see what each section is designed to represent (with the possible exception of the M & M’s). I will identify them for you in the paragraph below.
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First row: Brownie Fudge Cake, Rocky Road ice cream, Cupcake, and coming soon Chocolate Molten Lava Cake

Second row: Chocolate Chip Cookie, coming soon Choclate Wipe Out Cake–5 layers, a See’s Chocolate Heart, M & M’s, Marble Fudge

Third Row: Ice Cream Cone with Chocolate, Mint with chocolate chips, and Chocolate Ribbon, and an almost completed Hershey bar.

I have picked up numerous tips from Nancy as to stitching order–made the Criss-Cross Hungarian in the cupcake frosting much easier for me to stitch–with her reasoning behind it. We have also heard several ideas of other projects we might like to do on our own or as chapter projects. I am glad that this class really appealed to me when I first saw it and that I was one of the lucky ones to get a spot in this class.

Sue