Our Princeton EGA chapter has come to the end of an eventful year, all kinds of adventures and new learning, new work started, earlier work still in progress..
We had a significant loss this year with the death of Caroline Maisel a long time member and great embroiderer and designer. She is missed sadly, and our holiday party honored her work and her life in stitching. The turtle, a project she taught us, was the theme of a tableau set up at the party, to show off the members' completed turtles, and her family members were able to attend, to celebrate her life and her achievements.
We had trips to world class stitching venues,seeing ecclesiastical goldwork, and medieval tapestries, and private collections, and our monthly program meetings saw us stitching, beading and learning.
We did a Stitch in Public Day to encourage the general public to join us and enjoy our art, too. And we created a well received exhibit of work, with many members sending in works in a wide range of stitches. Another form of outreach involved us in teaching stitching at the summer program of Plainsboro Public Library, and you see Ruth L. at work with her students, along with Ginny H.
One of our Presidents, Suzanne D., was transferred out of our region, but has managed to visit us frequently, and you see her seated at our goodbye (well, au revoir!) dinner. The two remaining presidents are coping!
I'm putting up a little montage just to show our stuff for 2013. Hard to choose from many great pix, but this is just a sample.
Our chapter has all sorts of ambitions for 2014, from lacework demos to possible goldwork classes, and your blog admin. would like to hear from you, too, readers: what would you like to see in our blog in 2014? Stitch ideas, book reviews, program coverage, trip pix, just let us know what you would enjoy,and we'll do our best to oblige.
Remember if you're in the Princeton NJ area, we meet for program on the first Sunday in the month, September through June, and we have weekly stitch-ins, informal events where people drop in with their work, on Wednesday evenings. We have a lovely stash of kits, too, in case you want to join but don't have a current work in progress, and we'll give you one to start on!
Just send an email to us at the address given in the header of this blog, and we'll get back to you with exact directions and a warm invitation to join us as a guest and meet us all.
And Happy Healthy and Successful 2014 to all of us!
Before the New Year, I'll do a post of the highlights of our EGA year, which was packed with events, some joyful, some sad.
But meanwhile, here's an electronic sampler greeting, courtesy of the wonderful Jacquie Lawson, whose cards and greetings are well worth investigating! I really had a good time making this for you all.
Enjoy your holidays, and we all enjoy the friendships we've created over stitching.
On permanent display in the public gallery of Plainsboro Town Hall is a banner created by the Princeton Chapter of EGA, and this is a small tribute to the great skills of the 23 members -- one, Jane Sweeney, still very active in the chapter -- who created this artwork.
Here's the whole banner, seen from the side
And the top segments
Middle segments
And the bottom segments
It includes many forms of embroidery, from Jane's blackwork, to Mountmellick whitework, pulled work, canvas, and crewel. It features several ways of depicting the Mercer Oak, an iconic symbol of the Princeton region, relating to the Battle of Princeton, a turning point of the Revolutionary War. Also to be seen is the Eastern Goldfinch, the New Jersey state bird, and the violet, the state flower. There's a lot to see!
The piece is hung in an area too narrow to back up and get a front image of it all, so I photographed it from the side, and then did segments, so as to include all the parts.You'll see overlap if you study the three pictures.
And here's a picture of the accompanying literature explaining the planning, and naming the participants. their names and the form of embroidery they used are shown in a grid which correlates to the banner itself, so you can see who did what and how. Click on pictures to see better.
Browse and enjoy!
First Sunday of the month, and our monthly meeting, with a brief visit of Suzette D., from her new home in Texas, bringing with her the project her new group is working on,
goldwork on perforated paper, before getting to work on our current project
and we welcomed a guest, who also took part right away in this month's butterfly design, presented and taught by Ginny H., our program chair.
This project, which can be made up as an ornament or a scissors fob -- and this writer plans to make a fob to replace the tatty old bit of yarn currently attached to her embroidery scissors -- is one of those fast and satisfying projects which will most probably be finished!
Sally C. showed some of her completed work -- a doorstop and two biscornu, the biscornu on the right a wonder of piecing and joining as well as stitching
And there were works in progress, here Debi R. works on her turtle, a group project introduced and taught to the group by long-time member Caroline M., who sadly died recently, and will be honored at our holiday party with a reunion of turtles, and picture- taking, to share with her daughter, also a stitcher.
and Sally C passed around her almost completed Christmas stocking -- some haircuts required for the characters on it, then it's really complete. It looked wonderful to us already, though.
Liz A. shared magazines and other stitch related items given to her for rehoming, and some of them found new homes. One of the items, a framed picture of irises, she plans to complete and offer as a gift to the giver, as a thank you for the stitch related treasure trove. But beads and goldwork might get in there..they seem to get into most of her work.
If you're local to Princeton NJ, and would like to join us, contact us at the email address given in our header, and we'll get back to you with exact times and location and an invitation to come join us. We have a stitch-in, informal group, every Wednesday evening 7-9 p.m., and our monthly general meeting takes place at 1-4 p.m. on the first Sunday of the month. We welcome guests to come and see if they like us, before they need to think about official membership.
Our Guild chapter took part in this huge event, and we thought you'd like to see a panorama of what went on! the lady with the bouquet is one of our Presidents, Liz A. who's active in the art scene in the town, and you'll see there Ginny H. teaching, as always, at the stitchers' table. Florence K and Florence L were there explaining about our chapter and our stitching, and Ruth L brought in works, too. We put up a great showing for this outreach.
To see, go here: http://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com/2013/09/festival-of-arts-2013-plainsboro.html
Welcome to the opening post on the Princeton Embroiderers' blog. We're a group of stitchers and friends, we welcome visitors to our monthly meetings and weekly stitch-ins, and our blog will show us at work, at play, and on the road! To get in touch and ask for more information, email princetonega@yahoo.com.
Our October meeting, on the first Sunday, will be a talk on the Unicorn Tapestries in the Cloisters, the medieval section of the Metropolitan Museum of NY.
Currently we have a group exhibit, up for the month of September at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, and our blog admin. took pictures. Eventually one of the library staff insisted on taking pix of her, too, and placed her in front of each side of the exhibit!
Comments I heard in the course of the photo shoot: what amazing work, look at that miniature quilt, and oh, is that blackwork? and needlepoint? It went over well with library patrons, and if you're local, come and see it, too.
So here's the gallery of pictures:
