EGA Sun Region: Red Sails in the Sunset Seminar 2016

This past weekend I had the amazing opportunity to teach at the EGA Sun Region "Red Sails in the Sunset" Seminar.  I really enjoyed meeting and stitching with some pretty wonderful stitchers!  The closing speaker was Gwen Nelson (former President of the EGA) who presented a showcase of some of the pieces from the EGA collection.  It was my first experience teaching for the EGA and I already am looking forward to the next!  Below are some images from the two workshops that I taught and the awesome students that I had in class with me.

Day 1:  Interpretations of Moss workshop

The students were responding to a photograph of moss digitally printed on Kona cotton (from Spoonflower) and re-embroidering the patterns of the moss and lichen with creative metal and basic embroidery techniques.  Techniques included (but I did not limit them to):  long straight stitches, french knots (with cotton floss and with smooth purl), bullion knots, stem stitch, s-ing and chipping.  It was a lot of fun seeing which techniques they enjoyed and how different each student's moss and lichen became. 

 

Days 2 and 3:  Dandelion of a Thousand Wishes workshop
 Students learned creative metal techniques using my Dandelion design.  The techniques they learned included:  a variation of burden stitch, couching, silk wrapped purl, stretched pearl purl, cutwork, cutwork over string padding and chipping.  It was a very non-traditional approach to goldwork and the students seemed to really enjoy themselves (it was a super group!).  I've included a few photos here of some of the student's in progress work.  It was so different seeing how shiny their dandelions were using the new metal threads (I had used tarnished and old bits for mine).  It was also great fun seeing how they clipped and pinned back the dandelion fringed pieces as their pieces blossomed!