Princeton Embroiderers' Guild out and about, at the Festival of the Arts

This event is an annual event in Plainsboro, in and around the Public Library, celebrating all the arts, visual and performing, and our local artists.  We've been doing it for many years, and I, your humble blogwriter, have the honor of being one of the founders, so I'm always very proud to see it go well, and to take part.

  
A visitor taking a look at our setup

 Evie and Florence catching up

  
Florence studying her schwalm work  in the meantime

Visitors admiring Evie's work -- the eyeglass case, exquisite
 

 Florence sharing some of her needlepoint expertise with a visitor

 Evie explaining fine points of embroidery to a visitor seizing the chance to talk with an expert

 What we love to see!  someone signing up to hear more about us.  Thank you, Simone.

This year, our Guild was mobbed all afternoon!  Evie S., Florence L, Florence K, and Ruth L. and I were busy all afternoon offering information, instruction  and invitations to our Guild, to a stream of interested onlookers.   Quite a few of them took our blog flyer as well as our membership apps, so I hope they see this!  and some of them  appear here, too.

Princeton Embroiderers' Guild starts a new program year

Today was the first general meeting of the new program year for the Princeton Chapter of EGA, The Embroiderers' Guild of America,  and it started with a great presentation on the Unicorn Tapestries in the Cloisters section of the Metropolitan Museum of NY,  by Karlfried Froehlich, an authority both on religious iconography and on the history of the period. 

Helen H. introduced our speaker seated at far right here

and he was very generous in responding to questions throughout the presentation and afterwards.

The slide show gave us insights into the tapestries many of us had visited at the Cloisters, but with an added layer of interest in that he explained the many levels of meaning in the tapestries, from the plain narrative of the hunt, to the religious,  botanical and historic symbolism seen throughout these iconic works. And he added in some material on the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny in Paris, equally wonderful, but not always as well known.

After his departure, the members gave a Show and Tell, with Carol G. showing the triumphant completion of a beautiful Kaffe Fassett design

Debi R.  with her completed bunny, two views here! 

and a cross stitch hooded bathsheet

 

for a recent arrival in her family, with another work under way for another lucky relative

.  

And your humble blog writer was caught in candids taken by Karen G., intent on threading the silk thread which keeps on flying out of the needle

and working on a tiny part of the wilderness piece in progress. 

This is in response to the question she gets about why she never appears in the pictures in  the newsletter or our blog, mainly because she's taking the pix.  Well, now she does!

And members did some catchup, since we hadn't been together in this group for several months

Future plans for the chapter include:

an appearance at the Plainsboro Library Festival of the Arts on September 20th, 1-5 p.m. to demonstrate our finished and ongoing work and talk with the general public about stitching and what fun it would be  to join us.  Come and meet us!

an October meeting, first Sunday of October, 1-4 p.m. for work on Unfinished Objects, of which most of us have plenty

a three day goldwork workshop at Mendham Convent in mid October, organized by Carol P.

an expedition to Winterthur in Delaware in early November, organized by Helen H.,  to visit both the needlework exhibits and the Downton Abbey costume display.

These are in addition to our regular Wednesday evening stitch ins, year round,  7-9 p.m.

Members and potential members are warmly encouraged to join us and can get exact directions by emailing us at the address given in the header of this blogpost.

Princeton Chapter EGA summer outreach

Summer 2014 outreach, a stitching series for children at Plainsboro Library, kicked off last week, with a stitching project based on the summer theme It's All Greek to Me.

Here Ginny H. and staff volunteer Nicoletta are working with a busy group of stitchers this morning.  Ruth L. the founder many years ago, of the summer library stitching outreach program, was not in the pix, but very much on the scene.

The intensity of the situation is impressive, no chitchat, all  the participants studying their stitches and planning their colors and generally working like embroidery artists. Always heartening when boys as well as girls are interested in the textile arts. Your blogger's picture taking was scarcely registered!

This is just one of the forms of outreach our Guild chapter creates.  Meanwhile, stitch ins continue every Wednesday evening 7-9 throughout the summer, and you're warmly invited to stop in and meet us and join in.  Just contact the email given in the header, and you'll get exact directions.

Goldwork class, second session

The Guild made another foray to north Jersey yesterday for our second goldwork class.  And watch this space: there may be a return visit in the fall, just now being arranged.

Meanwhile, here we are at work yesterday

And some of our work in progress

Then there's the work of our teacher and other experts

We came home with many ideas and the materials to execute them, including real gold thread and gold kid, items very difficult for us to find usually.  Carol is a wonderful teacher, encouraging, very skilled, willing to demo any technique and is altogether great company. Can't wait to go back in the fall.

Readers, if you want to join us for adventures like this, and for regular quiet meetings, too, be in touch at the email address shown in our header.  Our general first Sunday of the month general meetings resume in September, but our weekly Wednesday evening stitch ins continue throughout the summer, and you're welcome to come and join us.

Farther afield, the EGA guild on the road studying goldwork

Yesterday was the first of two classes taught by master stitcher Carol Homer, at the convent in north Jersey we visited a while back, where the stitching workshop has been in continuous operation with both nuns and laypeople, since the 1850s.

Goldwork and other forms of ecclesiastical, that's church related,  stitching, are a tradition there, and Carol is currently teaching there and at her home.  She not only introduced us to goldwork, most of us having no experience of it before, but supplied a trove of materials, great  gold and silver threads, and many silks, and linen pieces to learn on.  

She had us set up a simple shape or two, drawn directly onto the stretched linen,  to get some learning on couching, the main theme of ecclesiastical work, and here we are in learning mode.  Carol demonstrated every step, and we embarked on a great adventure.  Next week is our second session, and we can hardly wait.

Princeton Embroiderers' Adventures in Schwalm Part Two

As you saw earlier (if not, scroll back a couple of posts and see what we're working on) we're up to stage two of the German whitework known as Schwalm. The hearts in the design are done in stitching then drawn threadwork, then there's needleweaving. 

  Most of us are working up to this!  so we spent the afternoon under Carol P's guidance, 

tackling the creation of the latticework from drawn threads, then in starting the needleweaving with, in your blog editor's case, some stumbles along the way, but that's why tiny scissors were created.


Jane S. longtime teacher of all things embroidery, gives you a sample here of the four stages -- partially drawn thread, drawn and stitched, then needleweaving at two points.

Some members are working on other projects while the whitework goes on around them, and you see a couple of them here. 

 Click on the pictures to see them better.

As for next month,that will be the annual potluck picnic hosted at Carol G's this year, where there will be wonderful food, and  definitely Pimms Cup  if Carol P has anything to say about it, and show and tell of our current and completed embroideries.  Look out for pictures of them.  That's the last general meeting of this membership year, and we resume in September.

But we do continue the Wednesday evening stitch ins, right through the summer, and new members are warmly invited to come and meet us and see if you'd like to join, at any time.  We can get you started with a project if you don't have one right now.  Email us at the address given in the header of this blog, and we'll get back to you with all the details you need. 

And our blog will continue to appear and keep you updated with our doings.  We will soon be taking part in a goldwork class, so you'll see pictures of that in progress, and other adventures, too.

April meeting -- Schwalm whitework embroidery

Carol P. led us in a session of learning Schwalm whitework embroidery, using a traditional design of linked hearts, and we soon understood why she had set up two meetings for this stitching form. It's slow and painstaking and has several stages of work, fine small stitching, cutting, drawing out thread, all of which need time.

Jane S. was a great help, too, as an experienced teacher who gave a generous assist to Carol, since this work needed a lot of observing and correction by the teacher, and there was a sizeable group enrolled.  Jane is seen here demonstrating how to start the thread skein correctly.

 Along with the kit, you see flyers of German women creating this kind of whitework, and scenes of the historic region it comes from.

This bottom picture is Carol's own work, on a different project. This is what we aspire to. She started us off on a simpler design, but still challenging enough for beginners.

 Nice afternoon for all of us. So in May we continue with the Schwalm adventure. 


In other news, our chapter has officially moved from the MidAtlantic Region of the Embroiderers' Guild of America to the Metropolitan Region.  Geographically we are right in the Metro area, so this is a good logistical move, enabling our reps. to get to regional meetings much more easily.


However, before we left, MAR invited us to take part in stitching the MAR banner, which is marked off in small squares, for members to design within as they choose, as long as they observe the colors.  The banner comes complete with a bag of threads of all kinds to choose from, and a roster so that participants can indicate which square she completed, her name and the date, for this historic document in stitching.

Your blog admin took on the first square for our chapter, and is struggling a bit, with the fineness of the mesh, and the stiff competition from previous stitchers, whose work is world class, as you see in the detail picture! 

But it seemed like a good thing for a president to do, as a friendly gesture as we leave. Other members of this chapter with superior stitching skills to mine will do squares, too, before the June deadline by which MAR needs to have it sent to the next chapter in the roster.