Sunday 23 June 2019

June 2019

Eight  members attended our June meeting, including Susan, who traveled down from the Central Tablelands to join us in person. Marina dropped  in during her lunch break from the class she was attending, Suganthi joined us after lunch, and Wendy waved hello from a distance as she performed President's duties.

This month's activity was provided by Susan, a canvas work stitch, a 'rice stitch' variation. Normally, rice stitch is done in two colours, but there are six  stitches within the finished rice stitch, and for this variation  up to six different colours and shades/tones can be used to complete each stitch.  The stitch can be worked on canvas, open-weave linen, or Aida cloth, and needs to be a fairly large stitch to cover the fabric and avoid   the colours  blending into each other. This rice stitch variation is a great way to experiment with colour and pattern - the more colours and tones/shades the better.



  Sheila completed the rice stitch using a variety of her hand dyed threads.  She wants to do more sampling using heavier threads to completely cover the canvas or may change the stitch count.  This stitch is now on Sheila's 'to do' list.  



Robyn's rice stitch


Annette's Rice Stitch


Jenny's Rice Stitch


Susan's Rice stitch

Show and tell happened as we continued to experiment with rice stitch.




Sheila did a class with Carolyn Sullivan at Quilt NSW.  Carolyn supplied all the materials and taught the class her stitching techniques.  Sheila enjoyed the class and has plans for further work using the techniques learned.  More of Carolyn's work can be found at: http://www.carolynsullivan.com.au/


Annette had attended a mini workshop with Annette Meldrum at the last Lace Guild meeting. Above is her sample of Embroidered lace net. Another addictive form of embroidery to add to her list to experiment with.


Susan has found canvas work to be  so much fun, and has started on a bigger piece of canvas, using up yet more yarns as she  explores texture. A mix of stitches have been used which she found in an old book  "Needlepoint: An Illustrated Pocket Guide to over 80 Beautiful Patterns" (published in 1980). The piece should keep her busy for a while.


Jenny had finally finished a crocheted scarf that she began back in November last year. The motif pattern is from her Mum's collection, cut from an Australian Home Journal, dated January 1947. It was meant to be done in No 40 Crochet cotton to form a tray cloth, but Jenny worked it in 4 ply cotton.


Annette has been working on  baby shawl no 2 for 2019. Almost finished, it is being worked in 3ply  Bendigo wool. Knitted on 5mm needles -a square knitted in the round with  increases at the corners. Pattern is Shetland Old Shale. Note for the future do not buy knitting patterns off the internet they are not necessarily correct and you may need to do much thinking and reverse knitting to get the design to work.


Jenny was also knitting a baby shawl in 3ply Bendigo wool, and also found patterns off the internet quite often include mistakes. The pattern is 'Hush little Baby Please Don't Cry'. With this exercise, Jenny had learnt a new knitting trick called a 'Lifeline', where another thread can be knitted in across the row to hold stitches.  If a mistake is made further along, the work can be un-pulled, and the lifeline will hold the stitches, prevent them from 'running', and make them easier to pick up. Two lifelines can be seen in the photo above, and will be easily pulled out when not needed.


Sheila continued her daily activity of paper cutting during the month of May.  She made use of some of her painted and gelli printed papers.  Now that Sheila has briefly dabbled in paper cutting, she knows she has lots more to learn and looks forward to more cutting


Needing a daily project that might involve less time each day, Sheila has been participating in ICAD, Index Card A Day.  For the backgrounds, Sheila is using gelli prints and brayer cleanups.  The collaged papers are of-cuts from the paper cutting.  Sheila is documenting her work at:

I wonder what we will all get up to next month? Come back for another visit to find out.




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