The Guild Parties On!

Today was the annual Festival of the Arts at the Plainsboro Public Library, and our chapter was represented by stitchers, their work, work in progress, books on embroidery, and flyers about our activities.  

Tayra brought her family, and started the afternoon with a bit of crewelwork with her daughter, after setting out Christmas stockings and wonderful stitched 3D pictures, and Evie brought in some marvelous work in a variety of stitching and forms.  Many admirers of Tayra and Evie's work over the afternoon.

I brought examples of goldwork, and needlepoint, and schwarm whitework.  Sorry, the location in front of windows made pix almost impossible!  great for other purposes,though.

Ruth was there, signing certificates of completion for young stitchers who had taken part in our summer stitching classes and came back with their completed work to show us.  

Many interested stoppers by and potential EGA members, too.  Anyway, it was a busy day, and that's why there are few pictures of us in stitching action, since once the people started arriving there was no time for pix!  We were demonstrating and explaining and generally being busy with the people, so bear with the lack of stitching visuals.  I took a couple before the people started arriving.

And I did a lot  that I can share both with the library and with you, of all the other activities of the day.  As usual, great weather, we're usually very lucky there, and happy people taking part in art forms they never thought they'd try. 

Setting up outside are the Chinese brush painters explaining to Library Director Carol what they are planning

And Art Lee, with his found objects ready to demo and assist with Sustainable Art from Found Objects! later it went like this

Those sections of bamboo in the background? they became wind chimes in the hands of handy festival goers  and the Twirling and Baton Tossing was in full swing all day

Nelly demonstrated Wet Felting to a happy group

 
 And young mandala makers worked with Julia

While nearby, mehndi painting went on

 and Alison again taught knotted jewelry making to a crowd

 
 And two young men took charge of the big loom for community weavings

 
The Chinese painters got under way, making bookmarks with your name in Chinese characters, and showing other forms of brush painting

And the little guys played happily with the giant Legos

 
The blockbuster of the Festival

 
Tatiana's Butterfly Installation, hundreds of butterflies created in the summer program by her young students, and her own creations, too, fluttered in the wind on the big windows, a huge success from both sides of the glass!

EGA Outreach at its best! and many thanks to the stitchers who came out and took part and helped us put our best foot forward. And to Donna S, of the Library,  who every year pulls all these moving parts into one whole and successful day.

Late Summer and the summer stitching goes on

The summer has seen a lot of stitching at our Guild chapter, and last evening's stitch-in yielded some beauties.

Here's Polly W.'s current needlepoint

And Debi's current baby gift, her young relatives are well cared for

Ginny is creating a calendar series of antique doll images, to be assembled as a wallhanging

Carol P., getting to the completion of a stocking to go to a grandchild for his first Christmas, here explaining a tricky technical point.

Margaret here seen at work on a magnificent goldwork fleur de lis, you really have to see this one in person.



And Tom is getting to the end of his tree skirt series of nine Santas, all historic, all different, all stitched in crewelwork with touches of gold.  Here he is with a Santa in progress on the hoop

Here's the general idea of how the tree skirt will work, with the Santa panels alternating with fabric inserts

And here are some of the Santas 

The September meeting date, with Liz Moroney teaching Temari Balls, is still being finalized, so look for an email from Helen H. confirming the date, once the instructor has had her chance to weigh in!

September Board is still scheduled for Wednesday September 2 at 7 p.m.  And the first Tuesday of the month daytime stitch in will take place Tuesday September 1 at 1 p.m.

The Princeton Embroiderers in Full Swing for the Summer, Home and Away

Stitch-in goes on, every Wednesday evening throughout the year, including high summer.  Here's  new prospective member, Tom, an accomplished stitcher and designer of his own work, at his first meeting

 This Santa figure is part of a large tree skirt, with a number of different versions of the Santa figure, each in its own panel.

and here's the new stitching that Sue T. has embarked on, for which she was discussing color selections with other members, at our most recent stitch-in.

And our outreach is at its peak, with the middle of the summer program, designed and presented by Ruth L. and Ginny H. for the children in the Plainsboro Public Library summer program.  

Ruth has led this for many years, always with a full registration and a waiting list, every summer. Some participants come year after year, and proudly bring their completed work from previous years to show us.

Four sessions, one per week,  of stitching on this year's theme of Local Color, brought in the theme of the local farm, the now defunct Walker Gordon, with the famous cows and the milking rotolactor, once the major employer of our small town.  

Here's the famous cow, a worldclass milker, who has  her own gravestone, marked You'll Do, Buttercup! on local land, as shown in their design, celebrating local color in the cultural sense!  She had a different stage name, once she became a beloved icon.
 

Ginny is a superb teacher, and here she is explaining to an engrossed group how color works, how to select your thread colors and harmonize your design.  

Helen H. one of the founders of our chapter, was there to assist in the teaching, too, patiently helping participants progress through their design decisions.  

 

A lot of learning in this seemingly simple artwork, from math to color relationships, to local history.

Ruth's daughter brought in a diorama to remind the group of the farming origins of our town.  Here's Ruth showing the setup.

And Nicoleta, a library professional who is also an accomplished stitcher, volunteers her time, too, each year to this program.  

Here we persuaded her to pose with one of her own small works, to show the level of expertise, and generosity in sharing, we're making available, free of charge, to our community, as Princeton EGA outreach in partnership with Plainsboro Public Library. 

Our next general meeting is the first Sunday in September, when Liz M. will teach the art of Temari Balls.  Meanwhile, there will be a daytime stitch-in the first Tuesday of August, 1-3 p.m. as well as the regular Wednesday evening stitch-ins.   Prospective members are warmly invited to check in with us, and join us at any of these events.Come as a guest, and decide if you'd like to join.

The Princeton Embroiderers Create Paper Jewelry

The May general meeting of the Princeton Chapter of EGA program was the long awaited and then snowed out, and rescheduled and and then iced out, and rerescheduled Paper Jewelry, Liz Adams leading the workshop.

Liz brought in complete kits for everyone to work, with the potential of creating a necklace, a bracelet and a pin, and many examples of her own completed beads and jewelry,  with plenty of extra raw material to draw on, and the group set to work to learn this new, to them, artform.  

She explained that the history of paper bead making goes back to the early Industrial Revolution, when paper became much cheaper and more accessible as a material, partly as the result of wood pulp's being introduced into the process, much cheaper than the earlier, prized, rag paper. 

The Victorians had a craze for paper beading, making portieres, those curtains in doorways, from large beads, and jewelry of various kinds from smaller one.  Even their dolls had paper jewelry. And Liz herself made a giant necklace, some years ago, for one of the 20 foot tall puppets resident at the local public library, who come out for special parades, such as today's Founder's Day, which coincided with our program meeting.

Since some members have young relatives they might want to teach this skill to, and since others incorporate beads into their stitching, they foresaw a number of uses of this approach, using simple inexpensive materials to create lovely objects.

Evie designed and created a pin, here in its final draft form

and Lyna made a supply of beads, using magazine paper and tissue paper, which she plans to incorporate into a necklace using other glass beads in her home supply.  

Florence plans to make a large number of beads, do the finishing work, then use memory wire to create coiled bracelets. 

Ginny created a bracelet which she wore home, and Sue is seen here  in the midst of making a bracelet for herself.

And here's Ginny's  finished work

 

Nice afternoon of fun with laughing, always a cheerful group to work with!

Our next General Meeting, the last of the current program year, is the Picnic, hosted by Carol P. at her home, on Sunday June 7, and members are reminded to let Carol know what food they plan to bring so that she can organize the event.

Also, Tuesday of this week is the monthly daytime stitch in, first Tuesday of the month, from 1-3, and the regular Wednesday evening stitch in continues as usual every Wednesday from 7-9.  The stitch ins continue throughout the summer.

The Embroiderers Guild ventures into new territory

Charlene Marietti, textile artist extraordinaire, was our April program instructor for a session of Japanese Braiding, aka Kumihimo.  Equipped with kits for beginners, including a Kumihimo Disk, as well as the real braiding frames, set up to demonstrate to us, Charlene gave us an afternoon of great fun, and a lot of new skills.  

Here's the real thing, used for serious braiding, normally on the floor, with the artist kneeling to work but here on a table for demo purposes

And here is Charlene showing us how to use the beginner's Kumihimo Disk

 Note her own jewelry -- the bracelet and pin are both made from braiding.

She brought in a small library of reference books

 many examples of beautiful braided items, from jewelry to cords useful as ties and belts and whatever the maker needs.  

And she prepared numerous precut and tied threads so that we could plunge right in and try our hands at this new form.  

There was not a single person who had ever done this before, and there was not a single person who left without learning how to get started!  Your humble blogwriter needed the help of Charlene plus two colleagues to get a couple of inches of braid completed, but is nonetheless proud of her achievement!  I worked, along with the other participants, a Maru Yotsu, basic chain, with four bobbins.Our kits included a set of instruction pages

and some of us got quite far into them

Charlene is knowledgeable not only about the skills and art of making braiding, but its history too, which dates back to when the shoguns were active and using the armor which was connected with tough braided cords, and to when the Japanese traditional dress required braided features, such as those used for the obi -- the sash-- or the braids that attached  netsuke to the owner's belt.

Not limited to Japan, similar braiding and designs have been found in South America's past, too.

Today's Western maker might be thinking more in terms of making the finishing braid for the pillows we needlepoint, or for bracelets and necklaces. She was wearing a wonderful twined bracelet and a pin, both created from Kumihimo. The ideas for using this artform are endless, and your writer sees, once she gets that basic chain down, using kumihimo as a feature in her mixed media art.

We really needed days more with this great instructor, but this one afternoon was a fine introduction, with a weaver and braider who loves to teach and shows it.  To learn more about her, go here.
 She produces a weekly newsletter, and you can sign up right on her site.

Reminder: Next Board meeting will be on Wednesday, April 29th, and the May Board meeting will be May 27.

The May 3rd's program is Paper Jewelry, taught by Liz Adams, and members will get a reminder of the sign-in list nearer the time. Anyone who has not yet signed in will be encouraged to do so, to give Liz time to create enough kits.  Cost will be $12 total. Also watch this blog for a post showing you examples of paper jewelry created by Liz, nearer the time, so you can be thinking of what you would like to make.

June 7 will be the annual picnic, this year hosted by Carol Prevost.   

And in September when we resume our program meetings (remember stitch-ins go on all year), Liz Maroney will teach Temari Balls. She would like everyone to be saving knee highs or pantyhose to cut up as stuffing for the temari ball project, not too early to start doing that.

April Program, Kumihimo, Japanese Braiding

Our April 12th meeting, Sunday at 1 p.m., will present a program by Charlene Marietti, on Kumihimo, The Art of  Japanese Braiding.  This will be an exciting afternoon of exploration of an artform new to most of us, with the outcome of making braiding for use around stitched pillows, purses, as belts, as framing for stitched artworks, or for clothing.  The traditional uses in Japan related largely to clothing.

More about our instructor, Charlene, excerpted and adapted from a Philadelphia newspaper article:

Long interested in and proficient in the textile arts in the US, having started with the study of Navajo crafts, she lived in England some years ago, and took advantage of her stay to take a two-year course with the prestigious City and Guilds of London in creative textile craft, learning both textile design and how to teach the subject. She received a certificate with distinction.And while there she studied under Makiko Tada, a Japanese master crafter who is lives in England and teaches an ancient Japanese braiding technique known as kumihimo.

"Basically I'm a weaver, braidmaker and knitter," Marietti said. "I weave rugs, some garments. I knit sweaters. "The braidmaking is kumihimo," she said, "which simply means braided rope," which is traditional for obijime, the sash cord used to affix the sash belt worn under a kimono and to create the closure ties on haori jackets, loose-fitting, broad-sleeved jackets worn by men.

In kumihimo, she works exclusively with silk - and the aggravation it entails. "I have difficulty finding the type of silk necessary," she said. ''It's hard just to find supplies this side of the Atlantic. I buy it from an importer in the state of Washington, who gets it from Japan."
A graduate of Ohio State University, she holds a bachelor's in medical technology and a master's in clinical pathology.


 Now a resident of Medford, NJ, we are very lucky she's close enough to us and generous enough to make her talents available.

Charlene will bring kits to share, complete with a frame (not the wooden one in the pix, though she will show us one) suitable for beginners, and threads to use, probably cotton, silk being impractical for beginning students.  We can supplement with threads from our own stash, and Ginny, Program Chair, is busy organizing all this.  Charlene wants to demonstrate how to warp up the frame, so that when we learn we will be able to continue later, since we'll have seen the whole process.

Members planning to take part need to email Helen or Liz to sign up, and be ready to pay $15 for their kit.

Your humble blogwriter used Jacqui Carey's book Creative Kumihimo, lent by Ginny, to show you possibilities of this artform. This is not exactly Charlene's plans for the afternoon, but it does illustrate what sort of braiding she will be introducing. 

 See you there!  

Other reminders: our usual daytime stitch-in will take place on Tuesday, April 7.  Princeton Chapter Board Meeting Wednesday April 8th at 7 p.m. and regular monthly program Sunday April 12th at 1 p.m.

The Stitchers Take a Trip to Morven

 
"Hail Specimen of Female Art" is the title of the blockbuster exhibit, five galleries, in the historic Princeton mansion Morven until late March 2015.

The Princeton Chapter EGA embroiderers thanks to arrangements made by President Helen H., devoted our monthly program meeting to a visit there, complete with a slide lecture from the curators, Marty and Dan Campanelli, and access to them with questions all afternoon as we all wandered the galleries admiring and being amazed.  

A five year old completing a neat sampler.  A ten year old with stitching skills many of us would envy after many more years than that of stitching experience. A stitched three dimensional globe of the world executed by a very young woman.  Wonderful designs created by stitching teachers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in New Jersey and taught to successions of students as the teachers moved around the state taking their skills and designs to instruct new audiences of girls.

Marty and Dan Campanelli, researchers par excellence and acknowledged authorities in the field of sampler research in this part of the world, as well as collectors and artists themselves, gave us an afternoon's education as they discussed the provenance, historical significance, rarity and general beauty of the many works in this exhibit.

They reminded us that female education was very much in evidence in the early eighteenth century, much of it at the urging of the Quaker community, who promoted education for everyone, rich or poor, and founded schools for that purpose.  Girls learned astronomy, chemistry, foreign languages, literature, as well as the needlework we take for granted.  

Their stitched maps and globes, for instance, are evidence of the teaching of stitching skills along with geography, great teaching method.  And their schools had huge windows to let in the maximum daylight for their stitching.  No stitching in the evening by the flickering candle and firelight!  as Marty Campanelli said, that's one of those beloved myths, not the reality. 

To learn more about the Campanellis, go here.  Although this was written a couple of years ago, their working methods continue in the same pattern as described there, as does their careful and attentive attitude to their research and their excitement over new discoveries.

If you're local to the Princeton area, the Morven exhibit is open to the end of March, and I wish I'd remembered to bring a little magnifying glass to see the minute stitches better!  If you go, bring one! 

Photography not being allowed in the building, and particularly not around priceless, irreplaceable textiles, you'll have to take my word on all this! But you can go here to see more about Morven and upcoming programs.

Meanwhile, back on earth..our March general meeting on Sunday March 1 at 1 p.m., will be a program on paper jewelry, taught by Liz Adams.  Liz will be in touch in plenty of time with information and all you need to know to take part in this fun and forgiving art form.

Board meeting will be on the preceding Wednesday evening, February 25th at 7 p.m.

And more immediately, remember Tuesday of this week, February 3, weather permitting, at 1 p.m. is our First Tuesday of the Month stitch in.