NSG - Annual Tea Party Challenge

The Northwest Sampler Guild held their annual tea today.  

The stitching challenge this year was anything related to tea.  A few years ago my cousin bought this tea set for me to use for stitching tools.  My Grandmother used tea sets like this to serve dessert and ice cream with coffee or tea to the "Welcome Club."  She always put a paper doily under the dessert to keep the ice cream from moving around on the plate, I thought is was kind of funny at the time.

I made the fruit tart scissors case and placed it on antique doilies purchased from The Antique Lace Museum in California.  The cup can be used for thread orts.   I have added a pin cushion, (not shown) which looks like the tea bag in the cup and a thimble.

The picture below shows the inside with the scissors. 

Next year's challenge is "houses."  My wheels are already turning in my head, I have an idea, so please come back next year.

Sweet Pea Stumpwork Class

Today I taught a stumpwork class for the NW Sampler Guild. There were six very experienced stitchers and I had a great time. Hope they enjoyed the class and learned enough to complete the project.

The description of the class said you will learn a new way to use embroidery stitches in a stumpwork sweet pea design. Some of the techniques will be silk shading, wired petal, padded pea pod just to name a few fun things to learn to stitch. The kit will include the silk for the background fabric, fibers, wire etc.

I requested that the ladies send pictures of their completed projects to add to my blog . . . . . you may see more soon.

Alphabet Sampler Challenge

While we were in England, the Sampler Guild received an invitation to join in the Alphabet Sampler Challenge with the Northwest Sampler Guild.

The only requirements were that the sampler had to have an alphabet. There is a tree in front of Hampton Court Palace that has mistletoe growing on the branches, I decided to make my sampler using the tree as my inspiration. Added a few flowers around the bottom and the rabbit ran into his hole at the bottom of the tree.

The following is a list of the stitches I used:

Fly stitch

Chain stitch

Cross stitch

Lazy daisy

French knots

Satin stitch

Turkey stitch

Straight stitch

This was a really fun project to do, might even do another one in the future!