Phwewww!!! what a fortnight!

Hello All!

I have finally surfaced from all the jollities over at Severn Valley HQ, and what a time we had, Saturday 21st September saw 23 members attending an all day workshop and dinner at Thornbury Golf Centre, I forgot my camera so I 'borrowed' these pictures from their website. 

The approach to the Golf centre, which is situated in an old farm and its buildings

The room used for the workshop

You can get an idea of the beautiful views we had all day and into the evening. We ate dinner in this room you can see it at the very end of the first photo.

Where we ate dinner

The workshop was led by the wonderful Clare Kingslake who gently led us through making either sheep pictures (excuse the threads they are the tacking threads around the sheep shapes)

or a Woven basket cushion front, 

Taken from a larger project in the book.

I succumbed and bought a copy of her book which she very kindly signed for me.

The dedication

I had chosen 'the sheep'! I love the way they take on character depending on the position of the heads etc,

'Ooh! What's that?'

or  'Quick look up there!'

On Wednesday 25th September we held a Members Past & Present social event as our monthly meeting , we were delighted to welcome more than 20 past members some from way back in the early days (including the lovely (and famous) Sandie Lush) and around the same number of present members, among the visitors there were 2 founder members and no less than 8 previous chairpersons at the gathering. The cake was amazing (again my camera was obvious by it's absence!!- Doh! must try harder) but as soon as I can get my hands on some 'piccy's' you will be the first to see them.

In the 2 weeks since all this happened I have sort of 'crashed' apart from some knitting and some hand sewing, (of course)  I've done most of the embroidery on the Victorian piece I started at WPQ

A spider's web for luck

The old lace is attached with single lazy daisy stitches and flowers made using straight stitch and French knots, plus some lazy daisy flowers and stem stitch as a filler on the solid fabric

Then today I learned a new stitch by adding some Pistil stitch flowers, I quite like the way they look.

So now it's almost complete, I will decide whether or not to leave on the 3D flower bits (White lacy one top left & small roses near Pistil stitch) as I'm not too sure about them, and find a filler for the dark blue bit in the centre. 

Then I'll have to decide if I want to stick pins in it, at 8 1/2" x 6 1/2" approx finished size it seems a bit big for that or find another use, I did think of adding some borders so I could perhaps make a Cushion Front, but I'm still thinking about it! All/any suggestions will be considered!!

Well I guess that's it for this time

Lorraine