May 2020

 Our group met again last Saturday, via Zoom again as our meeting space is still closed due to the Covid 19 virus. We actually held two meetings with a coffee break in between, which gave us more show and tell time. Seven of us attended the first meeting, and six of us attended the second one. We are getting good at this Zoom thing!

Show and tell is an integral part of our day, so without further ado, we present our show and tell, all with the help of the internet, e-mails, and Zoom.

New member Jo finished this piece a week before the lock-down. An example of an idea that she had, which was a third the size, free forming into this..... it was a marathon! Consisting of bullion knots, back stitch and satin stitch, worked in  wool thread on wool background. It’s the largest piece of hand stitch Jo has  ever done. It felt like quite an achievement!

Sheila has completed two shopping bags using partially completed projects from classes.  The machine embroidered figure was begun in a Forum class with Barbara Jackson.  It was quilted last year and finally assembled.  The abstract work was begun in a class with Helen Parsons ( https://www.instagram.com/helenelizabethzparsons/) last year.  It is collaged fabric and machine quilted.

Jenny was re-visiting our Pulled Back Stitch eyelet filler exercise from February, and is hoping to turn the piece into something practical.

These 2 are 'works in progress' views of Susan's "Butterflies" embroidery for our exhibition. The text is in whipped backstitch and the butterflies are in stem stitch outline. Susan is going to do more butterfly outlines in a different colour.

                                                                  

Robyn has been playing with Rust dying on a hankie using bottle tops and discarded Street cleaner road spikes.

Sheila joined the Carla Sonheim (https://www.instagram.com/carlasonheim/) class, 10 Years of Online teaching.  The mixed media lions were great fun to create.

Jenny had pulled out a UFO blanket consisting of different sized Granny Squares from approximately 7 years ago. The yarn is a cheap nasty acrylic from a $2 shop which is warm across her legs as she works. The blanket will continue as far as the yarn will allow, as the shop from which it was purchased has now closed. 

Jenny had also finished her cardigan in Bendigo Woollen Mills 'Bloom- Blackberry Bliss'. The cardigan still needs buttons, and is being worn without them. A trip to a button shop is on the plans when Covid 19 restrictions are lifted.

Wendy has been collecting neutral coloured threads and fibres of various thicknesses for many years. She has stitched with many, but just loves touching and playing with them. These neutral threads were intended for weavers and are difficult to stitch with. 

This is what happened when…“I did something…and then I did something to that……” With apologies to Paul Klee.

Sheila also continues her daily practice and for the month of May, she is creating dot faces every day.  This exercise was inspired by Carla Sonheim.  One dot of fluid acrylic is dropped onto the paper and spread with a piece of heavy card.  The number of drops needed can vary until the work is complete, or not.  Sheila's daily practice work can be found at:  https://www.instagram.com/thingstitcher/

Susan supplied us with a choice of  digital exercises for the month. The first was using the digital images proved on-line by The NGA in Canberra  https://nga.gov.au/knowmyname/works.cfm . We were encouraged to look and note what inspired us, and maybe stitch, paint, draw, or collage.

The second was inspired by Robert Genn 2010. We were encouraged to take a walk where we could, taking photos or drawing along the way with no particular focus. The idea was to get inspiration and ideas. 

 Robyn worked on choosing colours from two Digital works. The first photo was taken at the Sydney Zoo, while the second was a  Naomi Hodson painting found on the NGA link

Susan also  chose the same Naomi Hobson's "Yinyalma" image from the NGA link to study. Susan was attracted by the colours and the organic shapes. First she played with some of those shapes and the colours in a design, and then  used the colours to inspire her next quote embroidery, on 'inspiration'. Susan  now has her fabric in the hoop and is ready to stitch.

Jenny played with her camera while walking, trying to learn just some of  the features it provided. Above are just four of the photos taken on her walk. More can be found on her Instagram page at 

https://www.instagram.com/bugeyesj/

There is so much line and texture to be found just in our own back yard if we look .

The Covid 19 virus may have stopped us meeting in person, however, we are all creating in some way, shape or form while self isolating at home. We all hope to meet again in person soon as restrictions lift. So please come back next moth to see what we have been creating.

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/

March 2020

Current times call for current measures to hold creative meetings. The world has changed since our last meeting, and we now have a world  pandemic crisis with a tiny virus called COVID 19 to deal with. We are advised to stay home and to avoid crowds and meetings. So, did this tiny virus stop us? Of course not! We as a group decided to social distance ourselves, and to meet via Zoom. Three of us got together with the help of the internet, and video conferencing, and had a very quick show and tell. The three of us were all in the safety of our own homes away from the virus, one in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, one in Sydney's South West, and one in the Central West of NSW.

So without further ado, may we present show and tell for March 2020, all with the help of the internet.

Sheila's quilt, 'I Can See Clearly Now' has been selected to tour with the Vision 2020 exhibition. The quilt is made of hand dyed cottons with foiled spectacles.  The quilt is  machine quilted. Details of the tour dates can be found at https://vision2020textiles.com/

Jenny had finished off  a UFO. This work pouch was started a few years back, and was inspired by the work of Effie Mitrofanis. It had been sitting waiting for a few months just for a zipper and a lining. It features hemmed strips joined together with insertion stitches, then added surface stitching down the centre of the panels.

Annette had started this Virgin Mary piece in a class with Alison Cole during 2019 Summer School. The class was Opus Anglicanum,  worked in Split stitch in Au Vere A Soie Paris single strand and couched gold thread.

Alison's design has been modified to suit the appearance Annette  wanted her Virgin Mary to appear. After reading the English Medieval Embroidery at the V & A Museum exhibition, Annette realised Mary needed a more subdued cloak than the one worked on the sample and she needed a halo.

Annette's attempt at a fashionable hoop embroidery. It features appliqued gold silk on silk organza. The shape has been couched in place. The coloured stitches  are split stitch in Au Vere A Soie Paris. The body bits satin stitch and french knots.

Jenny's second UFO. This bag was started back in 2017 with one ball of Norro yarn that had been purchased some years previously. Jenny had combined the variegated yarn with a plain navy wool  to crochet  square flower motifs. The motifs had all been finished for some time, and had been joined onto the bag shape. The bag just needed a lining and some handles to be finished. Some tassels were added for decoration.

This is Annette's  6" square (approx)  of Robyn's 5 min lesson from our February meeting.  She plans to use it as a garden type background for a raised butterfly and dimensional flowers for our  up-coming exhibition. It has been worked on 21 count linen in a variety of Perle 5 and variegated threads randomly stitched.

Robyn has been back Stitching circles on Denim with navy and variegated thread. The finished project will be a work bag. 

Sheila continues her daily practice and for March she has been creating her own stencils.  She is using a hot tipped stencil cutting tool to cut the stencils.  More of her creative practice can be found at:  https://www.instagram.com/thingstitcher/

Sheila has  also been natural dying pieces of silk after she found cineria, a type of eucalypt, for sale in her local supermarket.  The plant material was wrapped in the fabric then bundled around a dowel, securely tied and boiled in iron water solution for two hours.  The cineria results in the orange colour.  Another eucalypt in her suburb was also used in the bundle with each side of the leaf providing a different colour on the raw silk.  Washers were added to another bundle.  The fabrics need to cure for several weeks before they can be washed and then used.

Jenny had continued with knitting her cardigan in Bendigo Woollen Mill "Bloom" - Blackberry Bliss. The back and one front has been completed.

So, a tiny virus has not stopped us creating. Who knows what will happen as this tiny bug creates havoc in our world. We all hope that you have enjoyed our cyber show and tell, and that you all remain safe and well to visit us next month as we show what we have created in self isolation and social distancing.