October Meeting Update

For our October meeting, our program was Georgette B.s presentation of the next part of the basket band in our Garden of Delights in a Basket. This is what we've done so far:

We began the band with the bargello stitch, also known as the florentine stitch or flame stitch.

That same meeting, we had a choice of putting our initials on the band. Several members used Judy Jeroy's crewel initials from the "Personally Yours" article in the March 2010 Needle Arts magazine. Ruth P. had a really good time embellishing her initials.

The next month, we had more crewel with our first flower. Georgette showed us all how to transfer the design onto our fabric. This flower used pink buttonhole stitch on the outside of the flower, purple chain stitch to separate the "petals," and long-arm french knots in salmon for the center.

At our October meeting Georgette presented two flowers, The first was blackwork with gold accents. This mirrors our blackwork box lid we did earlier in this series.

The second item was Deerfield embroidery. As usual, Georgette gave us a brief background on the stitch technique we were about to learn. Based on colonial crewel techniques, Deerfield embroidery was an embroidery technique popular in the early 20th century. It was known for it's different blue shades of indigo-dyed thread. That edge is new england laid stitch.

 Georgette also showed us how to get those spike stitches at a consistent angle. She used what she calls a "one over one" technique. You hold a little piece of appropriately-scaled graph paper against the base of the stitch to establish the correct angle for the next stitch. The same technique is used to get the squares in the laid stitches in the center lattice.


We have one more flower to go and then we attach the band to our baskets. Georgette is designing that last part and will present it within the first few months of 2013. We invite you to our next meeting which is our special holiday event on December 5 at 7:00. We will be having our annual "elf" dinner and party. Please come! We meet at the US Bank building in the community room at the rear by the parking lot. The door opens at 6:30.

 Our 2013 meetings will be as follows:  January 16, February 20, March 20, April 17, May 15, June 19, August 21, September 18, October 16, and December 4.