Thursday, May 8, 2008

pictures

I haven't taken a stitch all week! I've just been too tired or out in the evenings. So here are more photos from the EGA Great Lakes Regional Seminar. This first photo is a beaded pendant I made in a Sunday afternoon class with Andrea Sapon. It was a great class and she provided an incredible selection of beads (including bringing along her own stash and sharing it!). The backing is ultrasuede.

On Monday-Tuesday I did the Perfect Forest (shown here) with Catherine Jordan (at my guild meeting this week another member showed off the gorgeous fabrics and fibers she had dyed in another Catherine Jordan workshop at seminar). On Wednesday-Thursday I took Cricket with Lynn Payette.

My piece has a LOT of work to go. But here's how far I got in class...mainly just setting up the background to begin stitching. I love all of the choices you have working with layering sheers. It's amazing how different they will look just by changing the angle at which you place them!

We used a whole bunch of different fabrics and sheers and it's up to each person where to put what color, where to overlay, etc. Of course, Lynn had advice (and it was always good) and made suggestions as we went along. It's easy to get stumped--there are so many choices--but generally once you get going it kind of rolls along. All of the class pieces were looking very different from one another.

So, that said, here's a picture of the finished model. Mine will look vaguely similar but most likely quite different, too. In addition to the background, I did a little bit of the cording that will surround each leaf and I completed the wired, detached cricket wing. And, yes, we all know it's really a grasshopper. Apparently, Lynn was told that calling it grasshopper wouldn't sell but cricket would.

These last three pictures are of favors we got at some of the dinners and also my door prize, which was the magazine and wooden post-it note holder. The lipstick tube is actually a cunningly camouflaged sewing kit! It twists right out and you can remove the flannel with pins, needles and some thread. It is a lot of fun.

Most of the favors had stories, which made them even more fun. The story for the lipstick sewing cases was about how they gathered them and how they were able to remove the lipsticks in them.

The spool of perle cotton is in a little snap together ball. They had these for sale, too, and I got a load of them. Now, perhaps, my endlessly tangling perle will be tamed! (They're like the containers you can get from those gumball-like machines that have little toys or removable tattoos in them.)

The pincushions were all hand stitched, but three area chapters. The bases are zinc canning jar lids and many came from the estate of the mother-in-law of the seminar organizer. Some still had the penciled-in labels on them!

I still have more stuff to share but once again, time's up and I've gotta scoot.

1 comment:

Jane said...

The shiney fabric in the background of the "cricket" really shows up nice. It already looks gorgeous. I'm sorry you are feeling so tired. I was expecting a finished project by Monday night! LOL

Jane