Final Photos of Garden of Delights in a Basket

Georgette B. lent me her finished basket so I was finally able to get some good photos.

Here it is!

The crewel flower

The deerfield embroidery flower

The pulled thread flower

The blackwork flower

Pulled eyelet to tie it together

Bargello medallions

Crewel Initials

 

 

 

  This was the last of the pieces for our basket. Here is the set.

Thanks to Georgette and to Helen for coming up with this wonderful idea. We loved it!

May Stitch-in

From now on we will be hosting a community stitch-in at the Hobby Lobby in Upland on the second Monday of each month. Our thanks go to Hobby Lobby and the manager Meribel for letting us have the space.

Our next stitch-in will be on Monday May 13 from 10:00 - 4:30. Come anytime, stay for as long as you like. Bring your lunch or go out to one of the many food places in the area. Membership in the EGA is not necessary because this is open to ANYONE. Come by and have fun with us!

April Meeting

Our Program chairman presented us with an adorable heart tin topper design by Margaret Bendig.

While Margaret's design included a bonus chart for the heart on the left, our kit supplied thread for the heart on the right. Do you see the difference between the green on each heart? The one on the right is actually a two-sided italian cross while the one on the right is standard cross stitch.

The inside of each tin has an initial, too.

As usual, Georgette kitted up the project really well.

Here we all are, stitching away.

Our Show-and-Tell time included some little stitched gingerbread house ornaments from Ruth P. She also completed the ornament kit that was the chapter gift to our members. Denise M. also brought in her Rainforest Revisited stitched on congress cloth. Georgette B. showed off her Cleopatra's Cat stitched on black congress cloth.





We plan on being at Hobby Lobby in Upland on Monday, May 13 for a stitching time. Our next meeting will be on May 15 at 7:00 at the USBank building at Euclid and "D" Streets in Ontario, California. See you there!

February Meeting

This month we received the fourth flower for our basket band.
Here is a brief recap of our basket band project:

We started with a small row of bargello (also called Florentine or flame) stitch motifs. This is stitched with pearl cotton. Bargello is a counted stitch so it must be done on some type of "countable" fabric. Georgette chose hardanger fabric for this project.

The next month we added the first of our four flower designs, this one done in blackwork stitched with cotton floss and metallic cord. This is another counted stitch.

We also stitched our initials using the crewel technique and embellished them. Crewel is always stitched with wool threads. It is a surface embroidery technique that is not counted and is traditionally done on a heavier fabric like a twill made from linen or wool.

Then we added two more flowers. This one is done in the Deerfield stitch. It uses similar stitches to colonial stitching but is done with embroidery floss instead of wool. It is traditionally done in indigo shades. This is a surface embroidery stitch that also is not counted.

Then we had a crewel flower stitched using wool thread.

So this is what the basket band looked like going into our March meeting.











Georgette designed the fourth flower done in pulled stitch. It uses the traditional white-on-white (or in our case cream-on-cream) color so that you see the effect of the stitches more than the stitches themselves. There is sometimes confusion about pulled versus drawn thread techniques. Pulled thread techniques form a lacy look by pulling firmly on the stitching thread to distort the fabric to form holes. Different stitches create different hole patterns. No thread is removed from the fabric. Drawn thread, on the other hand, actually removes thread from the fabric to create the designs. Both pulled and drawn thread techniques are counted stitches. My camera was not working well so I will edit this post after I get some pictures.

I am sad to report that our stitch-ins, also called stitch-and-chats, will no longer be held at Ginger's Quilt Shop as the shop is closing.We will meet instead at the new Hobby Lobby classroom in Upland on Wednesday, March 6 from 9:30 - 2:00. We hope this new stitching spot works out where it's easier to meet new friends.  As soon as we have a firm schedule we will post it. In the meantime, stop by the Upland Hobby Lobby and tell Meribel "Baldy View says thanks for the room."

Don't forget that Helen is donating baskets to the first 12 people to have the basket band stitching completed by our April meeting, so get stitching! Georgette will discuss finishing the edge of the band at our next meeting.  We'll see you the USBank building at Euclid and "D" Streets in Ontario on April 24 at 7:00.

January Meeting

Happy Birthday, Baldy View! We celebrated 36 years this month.

 Darlene and Yvonne gave us special birthday gift.

 These adorable little pincushions! We each had the choice of this one, with a coffee bean design on top mounted in a coffee-themed espresso cup...

...or a cupcake design mounted in a rainbow espresso cup. They're very simple and fun little projects.

           Here's a better view of the design.  

What a sweet little gift!

Our next meeting will be February 20 at 7:00 at the USBank Building, Euclid and "D" Street in Ontario. We'll be continuing the basket band for our Garden of Delights in a Basket. We look forward to seeing you there.

December Meeting Update

We combined our November and December meetings into one meeting on December 5. We enjoyed our annual "elf supper." Helen I. made a big pot of soup, several people brought salad, bread, and drinks, and Ruth P. brought a cake.

Our Vice-President of Programs Georgette handed out gifts to the members of a little ornament kit, an adorable little evergreen tree made from upside-down hearts. Georgette included a kit to finish the ornament too.

   

 She even included the backing fabric, circle card shapes for mounting, and padding. There was even twisted cording in the kit too! Here is Ruth P's ornament with added beads.



                                                                                               
Our next meeting will be held on January 16 at the USBank building, Euclid and "D" Street, Ontario, California at 7:00. Every one interested in any needlework that uses a needle with an eye is welcome.
Please join us!

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.