Workshop in Virginia Beach!

I thoroughly enjoy traveling around the country teaching workshops. It's a pleasure and a privilege to share my knowledge and techniques with people who enjoy the same things: stitching, sewing, needlework....the creative arts. I recently was able to travel to Virginia Beach to teach The Purse Reticule to a great group of ladies from the Seaside Smockers, a chapter of the Smocking Arts Guild of America (SAGA). Not only did we have a wonderful, incredibly lighted room at the Rescue Squad 14 building, but I also enjoyed staying in a great hotel right on the beach.
The project, pictured to the right, is full of silk ribbon embroidery flowers, beading, handmade silk dupioni (who doesn't love silk?), beautiful quilted fabrics with gold etching and lots of parts and pieces to put together. We spend two days working on it in class and the rest is accomplished at home with the pattern instructions.


Silk ribbon embroidery is so much fun to do! You get a lot of bang for your buck: not much effort for a beautiful result and it covers a lot of area. Here we're working in the hoop doing the flowers on the pincushion. There's an iris, a 5-loop flower and a spider web rose....all so pretty! Just like the flowers blooming in my garden. Even though we had great light in the classroom, extra lighting and magnification is always helpful.

The emery is filled with real, authentic emery powder to sharpen needles and pins. We embroider Wisteria on it, as you can see in this photo to the left. The flowers are made with silk ribbon loops in descending sizes going to the bottom of each stem. Then each loop flower is "crushed" with a single glass bead. That little bit of glimmer adds so much to the design. Take a look at the large classroom in the photo at the right. There's a lot of room for everyone!

We make cord out of stranded embroidery floss in two colors that match the fabrics in the kits. It's fun to do and a good break from working on the embroidery. We use the Spinster, held here in the photo to the right. One person works the Spinster and the other person holds the other end of the embroidery threads. The person turns and turns the handle of the Spinster until the cord is REALLY twisted. Then one person grabs the center of the twisted cord, and brings the two ends together without letting them go slack. The center is released to twist up on itself 12" at a time (with someone holding both of the ends together) until the entire length is twisted to form the beautiful cord. The ends are knotted together so they don't untwist. So simple, so pretty, and out of something as humble and inexpensive as stranded embroidery floss.

The workshop was fun doing what we all love to do and spending time together as friends and fellow needleworkers!