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.

The Embroiderers bring in the new year with two programs

Our chapter meeting today the first of 2015, was packed with program presentation.  

First was a hands-on talk about the embroidery done by the presenter's 95 year old mother, Chake Beudjekian, a lifelong fine embroiderer in many styles and forms, and still stitching away.     

Now living in LA by way of Turkey then Lebanon, among other adventures, she is herself the daughter of a fine stitcher, also long- lived, and the mother of a pottery designer, Sona, who generously let us see and handle samples of her mother's textile work. You see her holding up a bedspread, in exquisite openwork.

Then the group went on a field trip, all of a block away, to visit the home of Ruth West, who shared with us her life and times, growing up in China, the Philippines and Europe, as part of a family of missionaries.  Though her family lost all their belongings in the tides of war more than once, they were still able to collect some fine examples of Filipino and Chinese textiles and embroideries, which Ruth passed around for us to see and marvel at.  

She  treasures these artworks from her family.  

And here's a quilt she made herself, using flour sack fabric.


The Chapter's February General Meeting, on Sunday February l, at 1 p.m. will be held at historic Morven in Princeton, where Marty and Dan Campanelli, curators of the current five-gallery NJ historic  sampler exhibit will give us a presentation and tour. 

They are well known collectors and scholars in the field of NJ historic samplers, and have published books on the subject.  We meet at Morven  to start the presentation at 1 pm and the admission fee is modest.  The enormous exhibit traces in stitched form the history of the region from Colonial days, and reflects the education and training of young girls evidenced in their work.

Princeton Chapter EGA upcoming Board and general meeting schedule:

Wednesday Jan 28, Board meeting 7 p.m.
Sunday Feb 1 Morven trip
Wednesday Feb 25 Board meeting 7 p.m.
Sunday March 1 1 p.m. General Meeting
Wednesday April 8 Board meeting 7 p.m.
Sunday April 12 General Meeting (note the adjusted day, to accommodate Easter)
Wednesday April 29 Board meeting 7 p.m.
Sunday May 3 General Meeting
Wednesday June 3 7 p.m. Board meeting
Sunday June 7 General meeting and end of program year.
Programs and Board meetings resume in September.

However, stitch ins, every Wednesday 7-9 p.m. and now on an additional first Tuesday of the month at 1 p.m. go on all year. 
Newcomers, it's fine to come to a Board meeting, where stitching is still happening anyway.  We just request that non-Board members allow all reports to be presented and discussed without other conversation.  Once the Board is concluded, we all stitch and chat.

The Embroiderers Party On!

December 7th was the 2014 Holiday Party for the guild chapter, and a great evening it was.  

The location and arrangements were done by Carol P. with every detail in place, she makes it look easy,  and members with guests enjoyed an evening of  meeting new friends, renewing acquaintance with returning members, a show and tell of a huge array of stitching, including a wonderful weaving, and all kinds of treats.  Oh and there was a great dinner, among all these events!

On left, retiring co-President Karen G.

 Left facing camera, event organizer Carol P.

Second from right Recording Secretary Florence L. and far right Newsletter Editor, Annalee B.

 Left Secret Stitcher organizer Sally C., next to past President Marilyn B.

Florence K. honored her mother by wearing a necklace she'd created of a steelcut shoebuckle from the 1920s, with beads.  

 And Ruth L. brought in a series of photograph albums recording events from the chapter for many years back, including the outreach programs held annually under her direction in the Plainsboro Library's summer children's programs.

Ginny H. as usual wearing several hats as Membership Chair, Program Chair and Outreach, also organized gift bags for the whole group, and here's the array waiting to be distributed, 

 Florence L. approving the contents of her bag...then here's Ginny showing the kit she'd included, goldwork thread and Thai silk, courtesy of Carol P, which we'll work on probably at our next general meeting. 

Courtesy of Margaret K., there was also an apron ready to decorate with stitching or, probably in the case of your blogwriter, painting as well (!) and tree ornaments.

Sally C. organized a second year of Secret Stitcher, after this year's stitchers were revealed to each other, and they signed up to continue with new secret stitch partners.

Evie S., as usual, did a terrific job of presenting the work and calling on stitchers to talk about their own pieces, in a Show and Tell.  

Here Sally is putting last minute touches on the presentation table.

There were two full tables of this year's work on display, ranging from needlepoint to schwalm whitework, to crewel, to stumpwork, to goldwork, bargello, virtually a catalog of stitching styles. 

Jane S. also showed the gift bag she created for a future Regional event, with a stitching project and all the threads needed to complete it, together with other stitching items. As you see, she added, on the outside of the bag, a photograph and listing of the contents.


We did our usual collection for the local Food Bank, as part of our own celebration.

A guest, spouse of a stitcher, took the group pic you see here, of the assembly, complete with new and returning officers. 

Karen G., on her retirement as co-President, received her Past President's EGA pin, and both Presidents, one returning, were presented with flower centerpieces as a thank you for their terms.

On the right of the tree, standing, Helen H. incoming (and former) President, and regional representative, next to Jane S., who is a founder member along with Helen of this chapter, as well as stitching teacher to the world! and, seated at right continuing President Liz A.

Great party and once we've recovered, we're looking forward to the January program, Sunday January 4th at 1 p.m.,  which will be a visit to a private home to see a collection of Asian embroideries, followed, back at our meeting room, by a discussion of the kit we received at the party on how to design this goldwork project.

If you want to join us, and see if you'd like to become a member, remember to drop a line to the email address at the top of this post, and your blogwriter will get back to you with details on location, and an invitation to come meet us.

The Guild Assembles at Evie S. home for her Stitching Expo

Today, Evie S., a longtime member and past President of the Princeton Chapter of  EGA, whose late mother and grandmother before her were also stitchers, and EGA members themselves, invited the chapter to her home to see her collection of work over the past few years. 

She's ready to pack these pieces before moving to a new home, and we got the chance to admire them before they vanished into packing boxes for the moment.  

From her earliest crewel works

 to her latest works in progress, in goldwork, 

going through needlepoint, bargello

crewel, in a huge array of stitches and designs, we were in a kind of museum of one person's work.  

And it's not all embroidery.  Here's a knitted afghan with embroidered motifs added

 And a wonderful quilt-like design

 Stumpwork in progress, as Evie explains the construction of a leaf motif

On the left you see a piece with Hardanger and other needle forms

Evie's made wallpieces, eyeglass cases, Hanukkah gift boxes, biscornus, has worked in blackwork, in stumpwork, beading, and currently in goldwork, too, and  has stitched on wool, on linen, on silk, on canvas, an amazing array of works. 

Some of the pieces were items that the chapter did as a group, and there was fun for members who had worked some of the same designs, in seeing how Evie's interpretation varied from their own.

Many of her pieces are in family collections already, and here's a special one, a blackwork butterfly, worked by her mother, and destined for a nephew. Evie's seen here holding it for you to see.

Just to see and handle these lovely works in fine stitching, with great skill, was a rare treat, and to do it among friends even more so.  Evie takes on challenging works, as you see from the variety of designs and approaches she's shown in this short account, and makes them look easy.

And there was food.  Veggies and dips, cookies, brownies, lemon bars...very happy group this afternoon. Thank you for a lovely afternoon, Evie!