We had a lovely meeting day in January. Sunny and a bit cold, but no snow and that's always a good thing!
Lots of clever things on the IFF Table like this sewing set:
Anne ran a quick business meeting and the new board was elected without incident.
More pretties from the IFF Table:
Donna P. was our teacher for the Mehitabel Scissor Fob. She brought some of her beading to inspire us all to greater things!
Will update tomorrow after the meeting. Look for photos of all our fun.
My apologies for getting these posted so late. My photos were on the desktop and I've only had access to the laptop.
I'm going to do this in two parts. The next post will happen in January when I will highlight our speaker and the wonderful things she brought to show us. I would do them all right now, but apparently everyone in the neighborhood is home on Christmas night and online eating up the bandwith.
First up - In February Jane will teaching us about the Japanese art of kumihimo. She made her cord for our hardanger ornament that Marty taught us in October.
A few of our mystery samplers from 2011.
Our table full of IFFs was truly impressive at the Holiday Luncheon. Here's some of the wonderful work that was completed and shown.
Anne leading us through the business side of our meeting.
Members who completed IFFs this year and were in attendance. Minus Anne and me - the photographer. Congratulations, ladies. We make some spectacular needlework!
Holiday ornaments from the exchange.
Some of our Mystery Sampler stitchers with their finished products.
On October 8th, a very enthusiastic group of us met to begin the project that is the Agecroft Sweetbag, which was featured on the cover of the March/April 2011 Needlearts magazine.
Betsy had volunteered to lead us in this endeavor. We diligently got down to business learned how to do the reverse chain stitch, detached buttonhole and spiral trellis.
At lunch some of us walked down the street to Red, Hot, and Blue and had ourselves a lovely and lively lunch!
After lunch we learned how to make Barrel Buttons, a wonderful extra that Betsy taught us, and discussed the finishing including a review of hemstitching.
Here's to seeing many of these lovely bags finished and on display at our meetings!
I have every intention of coming back here and posting a few photos from the August meeting. I meant to do it before I left, but I got sick and some things had to take a backseat to my packing and planning for Seminar.
But right now I'm in Naples, Florida and all my EGA photos are back on my desktop in Virginia. So I'll get those photos later this month.
Oatlands has a number of members here at National Seminar - Lucy, Maggie, Barbara F., Barbara G., Marge, Tinka, and myself - Donna L. If I missed anyone, pipe up and let me know.
This is my first National Seminar and you'll have to forgive me if I am a little bit starry-eyed. I keep meeting people who have only been names to me like Marnie Ritter and Michelle Roberts and Tanja Berlin.
I arrived in Florida on Thursday and drove from Tampa to visit my mother. And then turned around and left there on Friday to pick up my roommate at the Ft. Myers airport. Barbara F. and I had time to get the lay of the land and do a bit of grocery shopping to make our week easier.
Saturday morning Barbara headed off to class and I went and did some volunteer time. In the afternoon I got to visit the exhibit hall, Ruth Kern's traveling bookstore, and the Boutique which this year is being run by the Golden Needle out of Port Charlotte, FL. Cathy and her helpers have done a fabulous job keeping everyone supplied with some wonderful things. Yes, I found some books I couldn't stand to leave behind in Florida. And maybe a few other things as well.
Sunday was my first class - Alexander Alligator with Lynn Payette. This is an alligator scissor holder. And today, Monday, I started my class with Susan Goodman - "Life is a Beach." We spent the morning learning to iron and paint. And then finally got to thread up our needles this afternoon.
Every moment of this has been a pleasure, except maybe that little coughing fit I had during the Annual Meeting.
Here's few pretty pictures to make you all jealous!
View from the boardwalk as I walked to the beach on Saturday morning.
Yes. There is a bar out here at the beach!
Sunset over the pool right outside the hotel. We may never come home!
I was happy this morning to read the Needleprint blog and find news of Kimberly Servello. Some of us had a class with Kimberly a few years ago at MAR Seminar. You can read news of her here:
Needleprint
Our class was the blackwork purse featured in the article.
Kimberly has her own blog, Baroque Embellishments. Absolutely gorgeous things featured here by an extremely talented person.
We had a lovely Saturday meeting on July 23rd. Lots of members in attendance and a terrific class with Catherine Jordan.
Here are a few photos from the President's Challenge.
Donna P. cleverly used the doodle silk from Betsy's stumpwork class to create this design for her sunflower needle minder.
Beverly, of course, used queen stitch on hers.
Barbara created with wonderful cat singing on the fence at dusk.
Peggy created with beautiful crazy quilt piece around her cat magnet.
Donna L. set a viking ship to sail on a piece of four-way bargello.
Jane made a custom designed needle minder to match her fabulously batty bellpull hardware.
Amanda designed a replacement for her long lost name tag in this cheerful and bright design.
I've got more to say, but let's come back and post again tomorrow!
