plan to attend the rmws quarterly hapter meeting may 2 ......g – our annual chapter-sponsored g...
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MISSION STATEMENT: The purpose of this chapter is to foster the highest
standards of excellence in the practice of the art of embroidery through
an active program of education and study to preserve the heritage of the
art of embroidery.
ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE is the newsletter of the Rocky Moun-
tain Web Stitches Chapter of the Embroiderers’ Guild of America, Inc. and
is published four times a year. Deadline for submitting articles for this
newsletter is the third Saturday of the month prior to publication.
GENERAL MEETINGS: February, May, August & November
MEMBERSHIP: Dues are $59 annually. Plural membership dues are $15
inside Rocky Mountain Region and $20 outside of Rocky Mountain Region.
ADVERTISING RATES: 2”x 3” ad $10 per year
REPRINT RIGHTS: EGA Chapters have permission to reprint, with proper
credit to the chapter and individual, any original material in this newslet-
ter except those items clearly marked with the copyright symbol, on
which no blanket permission is given.
CHAPTER WEBSITE: www.rmwebstitchers.org
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS: www.egausa.org
ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION: www.rmrega.org
Region Director: Trudy Pohawpatchoko
RMWS Board Members
President: Nancy Munier ([email protected])
Vice President: Wanda Anderson ([email protected])
Treasurer: Susan Clayton ([email protected])
Region Rep: Barb Ing ([email protected])
Secretary: Lisa Hurley ([email protected])
Education: Rosemary Denton ([email protected])
“Education Guru” : Karen Anthony
Newsletter: Charlotte Brooks ([email protected])
Web Master: Vacant
Membership: Lisa Hurley ([email protected])
Historian: Vacant
Fundraising: Vacant
Outreach: Vacant
ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
ROCKY MOUNTAIN WEB STITCHERS NEWSLETTER
May 2019
Rocky Mountain Region of the Embroiderers’ Guild of America
Plan to attend the RMWS Quarterly Chapter Meeting
May 2 thru May 7, 2019
Dress Code: Spring Casual
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Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
Notes from Nancy
Welcome to our new members and big hellos to all the members that are participating in
this chapter meeting. I am fully relocated in Apache Junction, Arizona and looking forward
to a great year of stitching. The education group is going great guns and keep tempting me
with new projects...which I am almost ready to attack. Please keep popping into our Face-
book page and liking stuff on it and on the EGA page. This gets us out in front of so many
people and after all... we are a web chapter. Post pictures and make comments. So please
enjoy the meeting and if you think you need more information on something... let me know
(email is [email protected])
Welcome to our New RMWS Members
Wilma Belschwender (Bozeman, MT) Glennda Burton (Belgrade, MT)
Ann Chase (Bozeman MT) Karen Dassonville (Gallatin Gateway, MT)
Roxanne (Roxy) Goff (Livingston, MT) Becki Hodges (Great Falls, MT)
Gina Painter (Great Falls, MT) Leslie Reardon (Bozeman, MT)
Mychaela Shynes (Bozeman, MT) Kitty Stevenson (Bozeman, MT)
You Are Invited
What: The RMWS Quarterly Meeting
When: Thursday May 2 through Tuesday May 7, 2019.
Where: Online
How: RMWS Secretary, Lisa Hurley, will email the meeting password on May 1. On May 2
sign into the meeting (found on the RMWS homepage at rmwebstitchers.org, under the
“meeting information” topic). Be sure to go to the Quorum Registration page and sign in.
Then check out the topics on the Meeting Agenda and Discussion page. Give us your input,
ask questions and let us know what projects you’ve been working on. Visit the Motions page
to read through any motions being considered. Voting and discussion on the motions will
begin once a quorum has been reached.
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Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
RMWS EDUCATION NEWS
HAPPY SPRING from your Education Committee (Rosemary, Karen, Yvonne, Jennifer, and Barbara)– As a
reminder, this is the regular RMWS Education News that you receive in our quarterly newsletter and via email in March, June, September, and December. You are welcome to contact any of us if you have Educa-tion-related ideas or questions:
Rosemary Denton, Chairman – [email protected]
Karen Anthony – [email protected]
Yvonne Hallock – [email protected]
Jennifer Wollesen – [email protected]
Barbara Ing – [email protected]
WE NEED YOU!!!
** Future RMWS Member-led Stitch-A-Longs ** – We are still looking for volunteers who have or have access to a Stitch-A-Long of any length to begin later this year. You don’t even need to design one – there are SALs available for free on the internet, but we need someone who is willing to acquire one, send out emails, post photos, etc., like Karen is doing for Menagerie. Please think about it and contact me at [email protected] to talk more about doing this.
** Future RMWS GCC for 2020 ** -- Because of the long lead time it takes to put on a Group Corre-spondence Course, we are already soliciting ideas for a GCC in 2020 (our plan is to offer one GCC per year). At this time, RMWS is covering the entire registration fee for members, leaving you with just your text and mailing expenses. We’re looking at doing a survey of about 5 choices at the August Chapter Meeting. What GCCs do YOU want us to offer? Please go to https://egausa.org/group-correspondence-courses/ and check them out. Please contact me at [email protected] with your ideas. Don’t make this my decision (unless you want to do counted canvas!!!!)
GOING ON NOW –
Menagerie of Mystery Stitch-A-Long – have you ever wanted to explore different types of stitches and/or techniques? If so, check out our year-long stitch-a-long project. To date we have explored the fol-lowing techniques: Blackwork, Redwork, Whitework, Pulled Thread, Drawn Thread, Bargello, and Couching. To date we have explored the following types of stitches: Box and Square Stitches, Rhodes Stitches, Tied & Leaf Stitches, Crossed Stitches, Diagonal & Slanted Stitches, Eye & Star Stitches, and Hilton Stitches. The pur-pose of this project is to provide ideas for exploring various types of stitches and techniques without having to do a big project and only those “blocks” that members are interested in. In other words, you can choose any number of the 24 blocks (even just doing one of them). Rosemary Denton and Mary Krueger have both completed their spot samplers. Both have some blocks they used more than once in their samplers and nei-ther used all of the blocks (Mary used 15 and Rosemary used 14).
Most of our participating members chose to do spot samplers with the stitches and techniques that appealed to them most. Two of us have chosen to make a set of ornaments. Additionally, Karen is making a non-traditional band sampler for the various techniques. Each technique will be a single band but instead of putting all the bands on one piece of fabric, she is doing each separately and then joining them together, similar to what the San Francisco School of Needlework and Design is doing with their World’s Longest Band Sampler. (cont)
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Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
Remember you can join anytime. Photos and discussion of what members have completed so far are posted under the Menagerie SAL Discussion on our website under the Education tab and click on Cur-rent Chapter Projects. **New photos and postings have just been added – check them out!** If you have any questions or need additional information, contact Karen Anthony.
May Day Basket Stitching Opportunity – There is still time to create this beautiful basket designed by RMWS member Becky Autry. In case you missed it, here is Becky’s summary: “For this project, we’ll be creating a small May Day basket. During January and February, we’ll be cross-stitching the four panels. In March, we’ll assemble the basket. The panels can be stitched on either 28ct linen (14ct Aida) or 32ct linen (16ct Aida) utilizing threads from your stash. You may want to consider stitching a flower motif for all 4 panels or select two flowers (stitch twice for the four panels) or stitch the girl at the fence on all four panels but with different seasonal colors and flowers. If you are really adventurous, you can design your own panels (a blank template is available in the instructions). Happy Stitching.”
Obviously, we are well past the timeline described above. However, this project is still available and well worth doing! You can find the instructions in the Members Only section of our website. Please re-member NOT to share this project outside of our chapter. For more information, please contact Becky Au-try at [email protected]. I would love to see photos of your progress or hear from you that you are participating at [email protected].
GCC – Our annual chapter-sponsored GCC “Taming the Stash Monster” started March 1. It’s getting
rave reviews from the participants who have commented.
March’s EGA Facebook Stitch-A-Long – From the EGA website: “Our March project is the Queen Stitch Pincushion in the latest issue (March 2019) of EGA’s member-magazine, NeedleArts. The Queen Stitch Pincushion was designed and stitched by EGA member, Bev Steinhagen, as part of a design challenge in her chapter.” Kate Gaunt describes the piece as follows: “When I first saw Bev’s design, the motifs reminded me of early (1600s) spot sampler motifs. Leslie Gagliardi (EGA’s former president and my partner-in-crime for this SAL page) and I thought Bev’s project makes a great introduc-tion to spot samplers. This makes this month’s project a potential design challenge in that you might stitch a spot sampler beginning with Bev’s motifs.” Kate also provides some great links if you are interested in exploring spot samplers. The fun thing about this project is it ties very nicely with our own Menagerie SAL.
Do
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Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
April’s EGA Facebook Stitch-A-Long – From the EGA Website – “This month’s Stitch-a-Long has a very special purpose: participation benefits America’s Wounded Service Members. Every three years when a new EGA president is appointed, the incoming president has the privilege of ap-pointing a charity to support. EGA President Janet Noble has selected America’s wounded service mem-bers as her designated National Outreach Project. Multiple sets of designs are planned for release throughout Janet’s term. Each set of three projects is only $30 and they are available instantly as downloadable files. So you can get to stitching right away! To participate in this month ’s SAL, simply purchase one or both sets of projects and decide which one to stitch first. We ’d love it if you would post your progress throughout the month. Hint: These projects make GREAT programming material for your face-to-face chapter meetings too. It’s nice to be able to do a good deed and have fun stitching at the same time! We would also like to say a special “Thank YOU!” to the teachers who donated the projects for this fundraiser. Thank you to: Linda Reinmiller, Judy Jeroy, Carol Lynn Stratton, Celeste Chalasani, Kurdy Biggs, and Marie Campbell. Thank you all VERY much!”
EGA Stitching Opportunities – There is SO MUCH going on in the EGA! Have you glanced at your latest issue of Needle Arts? I also encourage you to visit https://egausa.org/latest-news/ to check out the latest offerings. As a reminder, we have an incentive program to reward completion of any EGA sponsored program, course, class, or even small stitching project – such as Facebook Stitch-A-Long project, Master Craftsman step, GCC, ICC, Lightning Round, EGA or RMR Seminar UFO, etc. Send us a description of what you did and photo(s) for us to put on the website and Facebook (by sending us your information, you are giving us permission to post it). We’ll enter your name in a drawing for every one you submit. Every June 1 we’ll draw two names; each will receive $25 to be used for something stitching-related. We’re getting close, and we need more participants!!!
GCC Lightning Rounds – There are four current Lightning Round GCCs that you can register for until May 1: “More Than a Rose,” “Fallen Leaves Sampler,” Enchanted Summer,” and “White on White Crazy Quilted Wall Piece.” You can find the descriptions on the EGA website at https://egausa.org/product-category/ lightning-round/. As a reminder, we will refund you half the Registration Fee upon successful completion of the class.
COMING UP –
RMWS Play Date – Karen Anthony has run into some scheduling and availability issues so she is de-laying her explorations until this summer. Please let her know if there are any specific topics you would like to see explored under our current topics or if there are any new topics you would like to see. Look for more information about this in the summer Education News emails and our next newsletter.
I Love a List
Do you have a favorite go-to tutorial? It could be for dying fabric, painting canvas, a finishing technique or
anything else that would be of interest to embroiderers. It may be something you’ve found on a blog or on
YouTube or a favorite website. This topic will be one of the discussion items during the upcoming meeting.
Share a brief description of the tutorial and how to access it. The final list will be compiled for the next
newsletter and also posted on the RMWS homepage under the I Love a List topic.
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BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS!
Stitchers and Books – what a happy marriage! Whether it’s the perfect reference book for your em-broidery medium, or light reading for that much-needed break, or something in between, we seem to love books. As a recurring feature, we’ll be including something about books in each issue. We’d love to in-clude something about YOUR favorite books in future issues. Just email a short paragraph to [email protected] and I’ll be thrilled to put it in.
From Jennifer: Hi Rosemary, since I was at the computer, I thought I’d let you know what my favor-ite go to book is. It is “the left-handed embroiderer’s companion” Yvette Stanton, author. Since I’m left-handed it makes sense that I would like this. In my local guild, we are starting an embroidery kit sampler and this book tells me how to do the stitches left handed. I can and sometimes do follow the right handed instructions, but Yvette’s book shows both in picture and words hot to do the stitch left handed. I liked the book so much I had it spiral bound so it will lay flat on the table for me.
From Rosemary: Are you intrigued by COLOR? I’m not talking about the science here but the histo-ry, usage, and popularity of colors. There are two reader-friendly books I recommend: Victoria Finlay’s Col-or: A Natural History of the Palette and Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color. For example, Finlay shared a wonderful tale about Michelangelo, an unfinished panel in the National Gallery in London, and ul-tramarine paint. The lower right corner of the panel is blank, probably reserved for a kneeling Virgin Mary. “But the only blue paint that was deemed worthy for her holy robe in Renaissance Italy was ultramarine, the most expensive of colors except for gold. That corner was probably blank because the paint had not arrived from the patron—and the twenty-five-year-old artist could never have afforded to pay for it himself (and he went on to other commissions and never returned to this work).”
DID YOU KNOW?
Spotlight on an EGA Program – Have you checked out EGA’s Petite Projects lately? I counted 68 wonderful small projects that cover every embroidery medium you can think of. Six of them were recently added. Because these are intended for personal use by EGA members (or chapters or regions for scheduled programs), you need to log in to the EGA website to access them. We are looking at the possibility of using some of these Petite Projects for an RMWS chapter activity in the future.
Yvonne’s Hints & Tips for April 2019 – I have learned to pay attention to how a floss or fiber twists as I stitch. As a rule as I stitch, I twist what’s in my needle as I stitch. I learned to watch how straighten out the twists to stranded floss/fibers like cotton or silk so they lay flat. A laying tool comes in handy to do this and it doesn’t have to be large, but should be something you can use comfortably. One day I was using pearl cotton #5 on a canvas piece, when I realized that the stitches on the canvas had a flattened look in-stead of the twisted one that comes with pearl cotton. Apparently, as I stitch I turn my needle in just the right direction to flatten pearl cotton out. I experimented and found that I could re-twist the fiber enough for it to look better. For either problem, using shorter lengths of fibers helps me keep the fiber and my stitches looking good. Eighteen inches is a good length to use for most fibers, but you can always try longer or shorter pieces. Happy Stitching!
Lists, Lists, Lists
The Free Needlework Patterns tab on the RMWS homepage has been updated with some new resources
and corrected links. The list is reprinted on page 8 of this newsletter.
The I Love a List tab on the homepage will now include the books being recommended by the Education
Committee, including stitching related non-fiction and fiction books.
Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
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Help Wanted : Web Master
Many thanks and appreciation to Fran Saperstein who volunteered to become
the RMWS Web Master. Unfortunately, life got too busy and Fran has had to re-
sign the position. So we have an opening for Web Master. Contact Becky Autry
for more information at: [email protected]
Dues are Due
Just an oh-so-gentle reminder to please
pay your RMWS dues early. Contact Lisa
Hurley ([email protected]) if you
haven’t received an email with all the
dues paying information.
Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
Do you have your pin yet?
Order by PayPal or send a $10
check to Susan Clayton, Rocky
Mountain Web Stitchers
Treasurer
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I Love a List...update
The Free Needlework Patterns list on the RMWS homepage has been updated and refreshed to replace
broken links and to include some new resources for free patterns. Take a look at the new list below:
EGA www.egausa.org The Petite Projects page currently has more than 65 patterns for all types of needlework. You must be an
EGA member to access these patterns. The Free Projects page is available to everyone and has several fun
patterns showcasing different types of needlework.
Blackwork Journey www.blackworkjourney.co.uk Elizabeth Almond provides many large patterns incorporating Blackwork, Assissi, Kogin, pulled thread and
other techniques. Her “Save the Stitches” Blackwork Sampleris very large and very wonderful.
Caron Collection www.caron-net.com The “free patterns” tab shows 25 canvaswork, cross stitch and sur-face embroidery patterns. The “kid’s projects” tab is well worth looking at with dozens more projects.
DMC https://www.dmc.com/us/patterns-5041/#null DMC posts several new patterns weekly
Drawn Thread www.drawnthread.com This designer offers a generous variety of cross stitch patterns in-cluding many using specialty stitches.
Heaven and Earth Designs https://heavenandearthdesigns.com This site currently has 4 large full coverage cross stitch freebie designs including a wonderful 20 page “Old Saint Nick” pattern.
Kreinik www.kreinik.com Dozens of projects covering many types of stitching.
Mirabilia Designs www.mirabilia.com This site has 15 free Nora Corbett Mirabilia charts including a mer-maid, a hula dancer and several cherubs.
Needle ‘n Thread www.needlenthread.com Mary Corbet has a generous selection of free patterns cover-ing various types of surface embroidery including monograms, church embroidery and Hungarian embroi-dery.
Nordic Needle www.nordicneedle.net Lots of Hardanger patterns by Roz Watnemo.
Rainbow Gallery www.rainbowgallery.com Free counted canvas charts, many designed by Laura J. Perin, and several cross stitch series designed by Erica Michaels.
Teresa Wentzler Collection www.twdesignworks.com Many free patterns including some whitework patterns and several ornament patterns found under the “complimentary charts” tab on the website.
Trish Burr Embroidery www.trishbembroidery.com This site offers several beautiful needlepainting free-bies as well as two whitework (with color) freebies. Look under the PDF Digital Patterns tab on her website to access the free patterns.
Victoria Sampler www.victoriasampler.com This site has 70+ free patterns including several Christmas An-gels designed by Thea Dueck. There are numerous cross stitch and specialty stitch, Hardanger and silk rib-bon patterns available.
Rocky Mountain Web Stitchers ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
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Register for Retreat 2019! Deadline: June 30, 2019*
Go to www.rmrega.org and click on the Retreat 2019 tab! The form, instructions, and
hotel information are all there!
Rocky Mountain Region Retreat 2019 In Coeur d’Alene, Idaho ~ October 18 – 19, 2019
Region Board Meeting – October 17th