Hearts and Hands for Sendai block

I've finished my Hearts and Hands for Sendai block and sent it to Leslie Ehrlich, the coordinator. She described the requirements on her blog. Deadline for submitting the blocks is June 30, 2011, so you have time  to make one if you wish. It's a fund raiser for earthquake/tsunami relief in Japan.

Here is mine.

Crazy Adventure and Sharon Boggon Workshop

What an adventure! What a learning time! What great new friends! It was the Adventure in Crazy Quilting and the 3-day workshop by Sharon Boggon of Australia. All were organized and guided by Maureen Greeson and Susan Elliott.
 It was Sharon's first trip to the USA and we were so lucky to learn from her in person, for one day during the Adventure and during the workshop. Of course we're accustomed to learn from her online.
Geraldine Krueger has been demonstrating on her blog how she is using some of the design elements Sharon taught. Keep going to earlier posts to see the series.
Additional one-day classes during the Adventure were taught by Allison Aller and Betty Pillsbury. Awsome line up. I really had a good time and learned so much I can use.
I didn't take many pictures. Others did, but I can't point you to them at the moment. Below is a picture of Sharon Boggon at work. On the left is Susan Elliott, photographer, and on the right, Helen McEntee, student.
Here are pictures of three of the pieced blocks I took to work on. The fourth was my block for the Hearts and Hands for Sendai project. I'm working to finish it and will post about it when I'm finished. It benefits from Sharon's design instruction.
The first is the block I put most of my practice stitches on.
The second is my exploration of orange and apple green. It has shisha stitch on a penny and a sticker I had stuck on with it's own adhesive.
The third is a work in progress: Purple baskets. It's 21 inches square.

After the Connecticut events, I went to Portland, Maine, for the New England Embroiderer's Guild of America seminar. I had meals with my roommate from last fall's EGA National Seminar in San Francsico, Violet Anderson of New Hampshire. It was good to see her again. I did studio time there instead of classes and worked on the Hearts and Hands for Sendai block. That's how it got almost done. My daughter's family lives in Portland, so I stayed with them and had some time for visiting. We had a beautiful Sunday afternoon to go to the Fort Williams shore. My granddaughter likes this scary tunnel in the fort.

EGA Seminar 2010

Classes, volunteering in the bookstore, corset demonstration, side trips - it was a great experience. The Embroidery Guild of America (EGA) National Seminar was in San Francsico, California, September 5-10, 2010.

I took two two-day classes taught by Lynn Payette. She is an artist who was trained by her professional artist parents. She gave very useful design tips about shading, shadowing and perspective. I was impressed with the breadth of her style. She teaches a lot and showed us many project examples.

The first class I took was "Painting and Gilding and Stitching, Oh My!" This was right up a crazy quilter's alley, because she provided tables full of supplies, told us how to use them and set us loose to try them all and develop our own design. I started by trying markers on white silk, making an oval shape swirled with color and a sketchy fish. I don't know where the fish came from out of the recesses of my mind, but it became my creation piece. Lynn provided a lot of papers and I used these for the panels below the fish oval. I'm not sure I like using the papers. Stitching through them can leave holes and tiny tears if you're not very careful.

My birthday was on September 5, during this class so I went to the local Ghiardelli chocolate shop and bought a tin of the dark variety to share with the class. That was a hit and I got a chorus of Happy Birthday sung for me.

During the days between classes, volunteered a few hours at the Ruth Kern bookstore. What a selection! What a temptation! I kept in mind how these books would be in my luggage however and didn't overdo my purchases. Here are some pages from the ones I bought:

Here is a Japanese book whose title I can't translate. It has lots of surface embroidery projects and patterns that are attractive to me and require no translation to do.

The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall: Reflections of Nature is a beautiful book in which Jane shows how she translates inspiration from nature into expressive art pieces in silk fabric and thread.

I couldn't resist Here Be Wyverns by Nancy Spies. She drafted hundreds of patterns from medieval sources and among these are dragons, my favorites. These of these patterns could be adapted to fillet crochet or just used in surface embroidery.

We were given a copy of the most interesting book, Pani & Fill: Breads and Threads of Italy which illustrates the design similarities between special decorative breads used in Italian festivals and Italian lace. Quite interesting.

I also made an excursion to the "can't miss" fabric and trims store, Britex Fabrics. It's a wonderful place with four or five flours of almost any fabric or trim you can imagine. I only bought these few things. Two silk fabrics in bright colors that will be great for picking the particular color area I want for a project and a length of green silk.

One evening we had a delightful historical lecture and demonstration of corsets by Autumn Adamme, owner and head designer at LeJardin, the premier couturier corset source for Hollywood stars. She claims they are very comfortable. Hmmm. I'd have to be convinced of that.

Then the second of Lynn Payette's classes ended the seminar. It is "California Poppy." I picked it because I was born in Salinas, California. When my parents returned to Iowa with me when I was one year old, my mother brought along California poppies for my grandmother's flower garden. I loved them and they were special in an Iowa garden. I remember being the color Lynn chose for her design although they are more commonly yellow. Lynn has an unusual technique for stumpwork that I enjoyed learning. Here are my completed poppies, framed under glass.



California Poppies















Happy holidays!

I'm wishing you a new year surrounded by beautiful stitches. I hope you are having a warm holiday in the midst of this cold season (here in the  northern hemisphere). Happy holiday wishes to those of you in the southern hemisphere or the tropics, too.

This is a gold holiday tree (some have thought it a witch's hat. Perhaps I should display it at Holloween as well. ).  My former crazy quilt group members challenged each other to make these back in 2003. It's 2 feet tall. The others were more like 6-10 inches tall.