Shoo Fly and Shadow

Another quilt? You might think so from the title, but this was the second class I attended at the American Needlepoint Guild Seminar in Lexington.

Shoo Fly and Shadow was designed and taught by Mary Lou Stransky, based on the quilt pattern of the same name.

I chose this class because I like quilt patterns and because it used lots of different stitches. Apart from Basketweave, there's Milanese, Nobuko, Diagonal Scotch and Upright and Horizontal Gobelin. Not only was it an exercise in learning new stitches, it was also a lesson on compensation.

I don't know how many hours I spent on this but I do remember that I didn't want to put it down once I had started. I'm sure I'm not the only person who can sit down for 'ten minutes at the frame' and discover that an hour has gone by.

The 4th Wise Man

In September 2003, having been to an American Needlepoint Guild Seminar two years earlier in Washington DC, we went back again. Work, distance and cost kind of got in the way of going in 2002.
Seminar 2003 was held in Lexington, Kentucky and I knew it was going to be an interesting adventure. To start with, after a long flight, then a short flight, we arrived in Lexington late in the evening. We were waiting for the shuttle to our hotel. (OK, I was standing outside, in my kilt, having a sly cigarette - Jane-Beth, being much more sensible than I, was in the air conditioned terminal building.) A gentleman, presumably local, came along. He was in blue-jeans, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, all but the six-guns and holsters. As he came past he stopped, looked at me and declared "You ain't from around here, are you boy?" then he walked on. I managed not to break up with laughter until he was out of sight. Really, it wasn't what I was expecting, but it got the visit off to a jolly start.

The 4th Wise Man was the first class I took at Lexington. It was taught over two days by Dorothy Lesher and it took me from September to December to finish it.

If you don't know the story, basically, Atraban (that's him) is on his way to join the three Magi but he gets side-tracked because he spends some of the treasure he was taking to Bethlehem on helping others. There are various versions of the story, but they all have him spending all his treasure on other people and never getting to Bethlehem. The embroidery shows Atraban with his last piece of treasure, a pearl, in his hand.

It was the technique. not the story, that attracted me to this class. The background is not stitched, but drawn in with watercolour pencils. I hadn't even thought of doing such a thing, never mind tried it, so I had to have a go.
There were also tassels (never made one before this) and twisted cords (same), so apart from some new stitches there were three new techniques. I didn't know whether I would ever use these techniques again but I'm glad I have them in my armoury (if I can remember how to do it!).

This was the first time Jane-Beth and I had been in the same class. We hardly spoke the whole time, and we were sitting where we couldn't see each other's work, but we both managed to make the same mistake with the starting point of the brick pattern. Spooky!

Festivals

There's nothing like the Edinburgh Festival season; Jazz Festival, Film Festival, Fringe and of course The Edinburgh International Festival. During the Festival period, allegedly, real Edinburgh people go abroad for two months and rent out their houses to festival goers at exorbitant rates. Since I don't know anyone who does that, I'm prepare to believe that it's a vile calumny on the good citizens of our beautiful city. That said, I do tend to avoid 'going up the town' during The Festival.

Which brings me on to March 2003 and "Festivals"

This was another Patchworks Macmillan Challenge. I had seen the fabrics a week before the start of the challenge and they had not spoken to me, but when they became available the colours made me think about the view from my kitchen window, looking south towards Calton Hill, Arthur's Seat and over the New Town to the castle. Apart from the bright orange, the colours were mostly dark and subdued. It struck me that they could be cut and layered to look like the rooftops seen through the summer darkness and then various outlines of buildings and windows could be stitched on top of the fabric.
There is a massive fireworks display every year to accompany a classical concert, so I put in the orange from the pack as a narrow line to show the glow of low level fireworks, with circles of brighter fabric for the cascades from higher flying rockets. There are usually searchlights so I added the two bands of light coming from Calton Hill (on the left) and the castle (right) to make a St Andrews Cross. The pack included the blue star fabric at the top - I did not stitch all the little stars myself! As a wise person once told me, "Life's too short for stuffing mushrooms."

Festivals came out a bit 'rough and ready', I could have done a better job of the silhouettes and the hand embroidery, but I enjoyed making it, and that, after all is the important point. We should enjoy  our embroidery, even those bits that didn't go too well.

I Finished The Chapter

For those who have been following the creation of "The Chapter" as documented in the Page of that name, it is finished and framed. It took me 120 hours to stitch this and now that it's framed I think it was worth the counting, the miscounting, the ripping and re-stitching.

Next I'll do something completely different.