Working late

I've been working 10-12 hour days, at work last week and at work and not this week. Last week I ran a conference at work. A second is in the works for a couple of weeks from now. A third looming.

This week I'm spending the middles of my days studying Japanese Embroidery (yes, right here in Chicago!) and the rest of the time I'm working. I'm getting quite tired but it's worth it. (there's room in a Japanese Embroidery "taster" class this coming weekend. Let me know if you're interested.)

Last Monday (the 10th) I learned to make Aunt Philly's toothbrush mats. My completed hot mats are shown above. You use strips of fabric and a buttonhole stitch with a large plastic needle. I can remember Aunt Addie making these in the 70s--and I can remember me being scornful of the "crafty" project. Aunt Addie made exquisite tatting and I couldn't see why she'd waste her time on these mats. Now I know. It's relaxing, fun and, ultimately, useful. I'm coming to appreciate brainless projects as I'm doing more demanding embroideries.As a treat for all of this hard work, I used a Jo-Ann's gift certificate and bought myself a couple of books. This is one. More on them tomorrow.

Outreach

We have a lot of outreach projects going on in both of my embroidery groups. I'm involved with most of them.So it made sense that I accept the post of Outreach chairperson for the Great Lakes Region of EGA. If you belong to a GLR chapter and are doing something for outreach, please let me know! That's my new task--to gather up and record these activities.

The small designs shown here are needlebooks for a "learn to stitch" project I'm leading at our show on October 2 and 3. (details to come). The cross stitch design is from Matrioshka Biscornu. I made up the backstitch acorn. I plan for the kits to come ready to go with a threaded needle and enough thread to complete the project.

This photo is of the piles of cutting I did this weekend. Covers and pages for many needlebooks plus cuts of fabric for other outreach projects.The gold and brown are wool felt needlebook covers. All of the white squares on the lower right are wool felt needlebook pages. Above on the left are Hardanger fabric cut into 3" squares for stitched designs we provide to the Hospice of the Calumet Region Crafters. On the upper right are Hardanger fabric needlebook covers and 6" squares for holiday ornaments for Hospice to sell.

Sometimes things come together perfectly! We have all of these projects going on and a member donated a whole roll of ivory Hardanger fabric to the chapter. (Thank you Karen!)It's very long (doesn't quite fit into my trunk) with loads of yards. This is what I've been using for planning piles of projects for the chapter. I sure hope people volunteer. We also plan to use it for samplers for teaching needlework at the YMCA next fall and for more bookmarks for the Hammond Reads literacy program. What a boon for our chapter!

Busy, busy

This is my busy time at work (conferences driving me wacky!) and also at home (I teach the crewel chatelaine in my header in July and I have to have several projects done, designed or ready to teach in September and October. I'm feeling both overwhelmed and charged up! I was very busy this weekend.Done, finished this weekend. Before I photographed it, one flower felt "enough." Now that I've seen the pix, I'm thinkin' it may not be quite done. I have three more flower centers begun and if I ever get home tonight, hope to get them completed and on so this can get into the mail.I got this kit from Fiber on a Whim. It was one of Make-It University's projects but I wasn't there to take the class so I just got the kit. (Lelia took the class--you can see her finished needlebook here, much more artfully photographed than mine.)It is layers of fabric, ephemera, fiber, and paper and Mistyfuse. I did some machine and a little hand embroidery on mine. It was quick fun and for a while I felt creative rather than frantic!

Kid Art

Okay, I love kid art. I think it's absolutely the greatest thing. This exhibit was at Lubeznik Gallery in Michigan City, Indiana. I can't tell you to go see it, it's gone (with a new one going up of kid art from homeschooled children--we'll be there).This is what you saw as you entered the gallery. I was just gobsmacked!It gives me hope. Not only that some schools are managing to keep art programs going but that they include textiles. There was embroidery and weaving here.These faces just blew me away.My photos just capture a small portion of the explosion of creativity and color the gallery rooms held.I love these hats.Inspired.

Persistence Pays Off, Part 2

DONE! There's nothing like a guild meeting to give me the final boost to persist and finish off a project so I can bring it to show and tell! I kept this project in a box that was in my way for the last few months. Mostly so that it wouldn't get shunted back to the UFO pile.

And I will be so happy not to have that box in my way all the time!

I checked and the copyright on the pattern is 2000. I thought this piece was from more like 2003 but I don't really remember. It was designed and taught by Judy Souliotis for Chicago ANG's Donaldson seminar one summer. Check out Judy's web page--especially if you're looking for fibers--she has lovely collections at wonderful prices. She also has a wonderful gallery. I'm glad I was able to take a class from her before her retirement from traveling to teach.

The canvas has two types of traditional Japanese gold applied, Judy did this for us before class. All of those leaves are variations of or nué. Given the trouble I had keeping the counted versions of this technique in line, I can't imagine doing it on an uncountable ground! I really like it--as you move the piece some leaves gain sparkle while others become opaque.

As I was playing around with the piece last night, thinking about possibilities for framing, I laid it on different backgrounds. I wondered about using gold behind it. I didn't have anything metallic gold to try but dull gold was, well, dull. Then I tried deep red, blah. Black. It looked nice with black. But then I laid it on white, while I was reaching for something else. The white behind the black canvas made the embroidery pop out. It was truly amazing, so dimensional it looked almost like stumpwork.

I showed my hubby and he was as astounded as I was--I never, ever would have picked white for behind black canvas but I think I may this time. (And that's why when ever I frame anything I drive everyone nuts because I have to try every mat and frame variation possible.)

Persistence Pays Off, part 1

For a while I've not had a lot to show. I'm working away but bigger projects take longer and are often slow to show visible progress.This bag is done and not quite done. The crocheting is completed on the bag. That's a bit of the handle sticking out in a loop. That is not quite done, it needs another row or two. The not done part is that I plan to felt these in the washer to make them denser. I am making both handles at the same time so that they more-or-less match and so that when I finish one, I'll have the other nearly completed. I plan to make some little flowers to use at the handles' attachment point but they won't be felted and so can wait. This is a big bag!

sparkly mornings

The mornings this week have been lovely. Clear and sparkling. It rained a bit over the weekend but cleared up for my walks. The bushes by our front door were sparking with raindrops on Sunday morning.We ran errands and had a pretty quiet weekend. We visited the Illinois State Museum Gallery at Lockport to see their new exhibit "On and of Paper." It was, as always, interesting. I was tempted, but did not succumb, to visit the nearby quilt shop Thimbles.In my digging last week I found a bag of ufo of ethnic embroidery taught by lynn vandenburg in the late 1980s. She taught some lovely classes on Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ethnic embroidery before leaving the area. I believe this design was Palestinian in origin.

The original project was to fill the fabric with several of these motifs (which were to have filled in areas with a second variegated perle color). The fabric is a barely countable, rather harsh feeling polyester. It is what the immigrants from that area Palestine, who were living in Chicago, were using to make their clothing.

The motifs were to have been stitched with random variegated perles. Students were instructed to pick up a new color, at random, each time a thread ended. We were also instructed not to pay attention to which way crosses crossed. This was a taste of the real thing--how generally rural women who wore elaborately embellished traditional clothing created it.

As you can see from the little sample here, I did not take well to it. I studiously tried not to pay attention to how my crosses crossed. And I do have loads of mistakes in counting--for the simple reason that I could not see to count this ground. But the color, I just could not do random there.

After the fun memories finding this partially completed motif rekindled, I realized that with a little bit of stitching I could have a motif that looked, more or less, complete. So I did that bit of stitching and declared this piece done. Given the dark color and serviceable fabric, I plan to make it into a book cover. someday.

I also found, not photographed yet, a small sampler with examples of three types of Mediterranean embroidery. It's about 1/2 to 2/3 done. I've been working on a bit of the Greek Islands motif. There's enough done and it's a pretty enough piece that I may complete it. At least this is on a natural linen so I can see to count it!

I also know that somewhere in the massive ufo pile is the beginning of an Eastern European Goddess Towel stitched on 36 count linen, also from a class by lynn.