November 2020

 Ten of our members met in reality in November under strict COVID guidelines for meetings inside.

A very successful day was had with show and tell, a shared lunch, a birthday cake for one of our members having a "0" birthday, and chatter about next year.

We also welcomed new member Sheila C to our group.

Show and tell brought lots of items, a small section of which is below.

Above is Suganthi's exercise from a Vinny Stapley's workshop for Stitch Club that Textileartist.org hosts. The exercise called for sheer pale fabrics which Suganthi had zero of , so went with what was in her stash.  A stylised version of a eucalyptus twig was used as her motifs.

Sheila B's daily practice for November was to stitch a 10 cm square. She used a plant dyed fabric, plant dyed threads and non-plant dyed threads for these stitch meditations. The blocks have been connected to create a scroll. 

Susan's progress on her memory quilt. Susan still needs a few more rows of hexagons, especially to make it longer, then  will have to work out how to finish it. The quilt will be left unpadded so it can be used  as it is in summer, and possibly over a doona in winter. Susan is still thinking about it all.

Sheila B is participating in  #carvedecember hosted by @balzerdesigns. This block was based on her grandson's drawing. She repeated and coloured the blocks for a gallery of Grammas, Andy Warhol style.

Jenny had completed a bobbin lace hankie edge for a friend's '0' birthday. It had been completed for some time and has now been gifted. Completed with a variegated Gutermann Sulky thread, and two strands of  Gutermann cotton in yellow as a gimp along the edge.

Recently, when Jo was stuck getting something started, she made a series of spot samplers.

In this one  metal threads and beads were used .

 

Susan's  first mosaic project, a bird bath, which has been therapeutic in more ways than one. 

So one COVID year has passed and we all survived. I wonder what 20201 will bring. Please join us in 2022 to find out. 

April 2020

 Another month has gone by, and still we are in the midst of this World Pandemic of Covid19. This little virus has made us all stay home, and venture out only for essentials, to go to work, or to exercise. We had another meeting via Zoom last Saturday with seven members joining in for show and tell. 

 First up we have Robyn who been working on a UFO, a  black-work piece from an Alison Snepp workshop.

Susan's  "Happiness" quote embroidery is the 4th in what's turning out to be a series. It is all in stranded cotton, with lettering outlined in whipped back stitch, and filled in with satin stitch, and the background filled in with irregular satin stitch. Susan has been using up her stash, and hopes the effect is joyful and energetic. 

Annette has made a Crochet donut. Over the years she has spent a fortune on pink iced donuts for her daughter. During a clean out, Annette found the instructions for the crochet donut pincushion which she decided to try. Worked with DMC no 4 cotton and 2.5 hook. No  more bought donuts for her daughter.

These Raised Butterflies are to go on Annette's  Pulled work background from last month. The butterflies are worked with silk thread and a thread of shiny variegated machine thread together in the needle. Why a non machine embroiderer had a lot of machine embroidery threads in the cupboard Annette  did not know but it gives life to the wings. Worked on silk organza backed with iron on vilene.

Jenny has been using up tiny scraps of even weave fabric, left over from other projects, to create tiny Hardanger motifs. Thread used is a variegated Perle 8. A decision is yet to be made what to do with them .

Susan had crocheted a beanie for herself, making up her own pattern with a couple of new stitches including a rib effect.  It will go over her ears so great for winter in the Tablelands.

Jenny had made progress on her new winter cardigan, finishing another front, and beginning a sleeve. It is being worked in Bendigo Woollen Mills Bloom - Blackberry Bliss

Susan had started her first ever mosaic, an old dinner set being smashed to cover a birdbath, the inside of the bowl so far, such fun.

For April, Sheila's daily practice is collage.  Continuing to work in a 1995 diary, she creates a paper based collage using her painted papers, gelli prints, stamped papers and mixed commercial papers to create a design.  The diary confirms that 25 years ago, Sheila was doing the basic (introductory) course with The Embroiderers' Guild.  That lead to the intermediate certificate which ultimately lead to the formation of Stitchers Plus.

While being overwhelmed with numbers in relation to the pandemic and trying to see the relationship between the days, Sheila started collecting and stitching on a graph that appears in the daily newspaper.  She is stitching a french knot for each death using the state and territory graph bars.  The individual blocks are being assembled in weekly rows which are then joined together.  The resulting work will grow to whatever size it becomes until the newspaper stops providing the graph.

Sheila is also working on a major project that needs to be kept under wraps.  The work is still at the point where it could be submitted for exhibition or submitted to the garbage bin.

Normally our little group has a ten minute exercise at the beginning of our day to get our creative juices flowing. As COVID 19 and the world pandemic has interrupted our meetings, Jenny decided we still needed a creative challenge. A music challenge had been on her agenda for a while, she just had to work out how to deliver it. YouTube Music made it easy, so a link to the following music video was e-mailed to all members of the group, with the advice to close our eyes as we put pen to paper. Our inspiration was found here - Maddie Poppe - 'Made You Miss Miss Me'.

Our results can be seen below.

We hope that this COVID 19 virus will soon be at an end so that we can meet in person again. In the mean time, out Face Book page might provide some other insights into what we do.

                                   https://www.facebook.com/Stitchers-Plus-638409429660889/