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a quick present

yvette — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:53:29 +0000

We found out yesterday that one of our favourite teachers at the girls’ school is leaving at the end of this term (tomorrow!). Both our girls have had her, and had a great time in her class. She’s a very dynamic teacher, who creates a fun and interesting learning experience.

As parents, we found her to be wonderful to work with. She was generous with her time when we needed to discuss things with her. Last year when we (as in us and her) knew something was up with Rainbow Girl, but couldn’t figure it out, she regularly gave us updates. Eventually together we decided it was time to take Rainbow Girl off to a behavioural optometrist who diagnosed long-sightedness and prescribed glasses – a course of action that has made the *world* of difference!

To say thank you for the impact that she has had on our girls’ lives and at the school in general, I wanted to make her a gift. As bookmarks seem to be my thing at the moment (and she’s been the school librarian this year), that was the gift of choice!
To go with her bright personality, I selected some of the brightest Cosmo Seasons threads and showed them to the girls and asked them to choose which one. They chose 8080. In a skein, it looks a bit garish: orange, pink, blue and green. But stitched up, it looks *gorgeous*! I never expected it to look so fantastic.

Thank you, Nicole, for being a wonderful, wonderful teacher. Thanks for the impact you have had on all our lives, with your bright and happy nature. We wish you all the best for a long, happy and healthy future.

last day of school

yvette — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:41:24 +0000

Today is the last day of school for the year for lots of children in New South Wales (a state of Australia). And then it will be school summer holidays for about 6 weeks. I guess this is quite a bit different to what those of you in the Northern Hemisphere are used to! All the weather reports are warning that this will be a wet summer, so we’re expecting lots of jigsaw time – a great holiday activity!

We’ll be staying home for the holidays, due to the fact that we’ve already had rather a large trip away this year (to Ethiopia for 3 months!), but we may take a short trip down to Canberra, as the National Gallery is showing an exhibition of 150 costumes from the Ballets Russes.

I’d forgotten that the exhibition was coming. We heard of it when we were down there last year (I think!), but it had since been replaced by other things in my head! My husband and I heard an interview with the curator on the radio the other day and decided we’d have to go! I’ve just had a little look at the gallery’s information about it on their website, and it looks wonderful. I can’t wait!

Anyway, due to it being school holidays from tomorrow onwards, I might be posting a little less regularly, as my family will be around a lot more and will require more of my attention!

Given that this is the end of the school year, I’d also like to say how proud I am of my daughters, both of whom have had a fabulous year at school. Also, thanks to their two wonderful teachers. The girls have really enjoyed being in your classes. They’ve learned heaps, and we have appreciated your care of them.

finished Hardanger bookmark

yvette — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:36:10 +0000

Here’s the finished Hardanger embroidery bookmark. This is a thank you gift for Gillian, giver of the beautiful Turkish scarf.I used a new type of finishing for it, that I thought up in a lucid moment the other day, and was pretty pleased with the result.

I’m not entirely happy with the fact that the Algerian eyelets are so prominent in colour, but that’s ok. I’m not sure what would work better. Perhaps a lightish brown/beige colour of the type that’s found in the multicoloured perle cotton.

However, I’m reasonably confident that she’ll appreciate it anyway. I enjoyed making it!

Also, just a reminder: If you are interested in learning how to do Hardanger embroidery, I will be teaching a beginner’s Hardanger class for The Crewel Gobelin in Killara, Sydney, for three weeks, starting Tuesday 22nd June, from 10am to 12noon. You can see pictures of the project here. Please contact The Crewel Gobelin to enrol. I’d love to meet you there.

a suitable thank you

yvette — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:31:40 +0000

I have been working on a thank you gift for Gillian, who presented me with the beautiful scarf from Turkey.

I’ve decided that a suitable gift is a bookmark, with Hardanger embroidery worked on it. I have no idea if she has any interest in embroidery, therefore if it is a bookmark, she can choose to park it in a book forever more if she doesn’t actually want to look at it often!

If you know me, you know that I particularly like Hardanger embroidery which is more in the traditional band style. However in more recent times, I have tried working with coloured threads, which is quite a departure for me, as I am a complete sucker for white on white Hardanger!
So here is the bookmark in progress.

a beautiful gift

yvette — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:38:35 +0000

A lady from my biblestudy group recently went to Turkey to visit relatives of hers. Before she went, I jokingly said “bring me something back from the textile markets!” And of course, I thought nothing more of it.

But, she did think more of it.

Yesterday she was back at biblestudy, fresh from her trip. She deposited a black plastic bag in front of me with a wry smile and walked off to get a cuppa. I opened it, and pulled out the most beautiful scarf.
The colours are gorgeous, and it is made of an interconnecting web of ribbony braid things. It is beautiful!

She told me that it was from Istanbul (no, its Constantinople…), but didn’t come from a shop that tourists would normally go into. She had to enter the shop past two “gentlemen” who made her feel very nervous and very pleased that her husband was with her.

I feel very special, and very spoilt. She said that she enjoyed shopping for it, as it gave her a purpose for her shopping.

Thank you so much, Gillian. Now I need to come up with a suitable thank you…

Public thanks: Phil Bush

yvette — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:31:50 +0000

When I was at school, apparently I told my mum in about Year 10 that I wanted to be a book designer. I don’t remember doing this. When it came time to choose what I wanted to do after school, there were a few options that appealed to me: graphic design and science – perhaps medical science research.

Because I loved art so much, in the end I opted to study graphic design.

My university degree was called Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication. I hated first year. It was boring and general and I think they actually used it to weed out the students who weren’t likely to stick with the course. We did a subject that I really disliked called creative problem solving. I don’t know why I hated this subject so much – its now something I do ALL the time, and a skill that I am so pleased to have! Perhaps it was too much for my green just-out-of-school brain.

I made my way through uni, never really fitting in with most of my cohort – I just wasn’t “way out” enough. I really enjoyed illustration, photography, design computing and 3D model making, but really disliked animation, and film making sorts of subjects. It seemed that I was a “print” girl.

In my final year, I had to do a major project, and I chose to do book design. WIthout even realising it, I had come back to my long-forgotten dream. I gained my degree with honours, and was terribly pleased to have completed it, and finally be out of there!

I saw a job advertisement for a position as an in-house book designer with a major international publisher. (This sort of job is REALLY rare because most book designers work freelance.) The applicant needed one year of experience – which I didn’t have. But I applied anyway. I made my way through the selection process, and was successful in gaining the position.

I LOVED it. My boss’s name was Phil Bush. He gave me so many opportunities to learn so much. I pestered him almost every day, looking for more to do. I think I must have driven him mad. However, as I grew more experienced, I was able to work more independently, and make decisions for myself and recognise the next job to be done.

When he gave me opportunities to do important things like design a cover for a book, he always gave me great feedback on what he liked and didn’t like. He never used any of my cover designs, but then neither should he have – because they weren’t very good!

But I was learning and I loved it. I was also re-gaining my self-confidence in my abilities. Uni had really stuffed my self-confidence. I was NEVER the person they wanted me to be. I wasn’t hip. I wasn’t way out. I didn’t push my designs as far as others might (and this is something I have had to work hard on). I began to feel that I wasn’t actually very creative. But working this job, I came to see that I was good at what I did. I was the person they needed in the job.

Later on, when I went on maternity leave, Phil was struck down with throat cancer. From his diagnosis to death was only about 7 days. We were all in shock.

I learnt so much from Phil. I still wonder why he gave me the job. I have no idea what it was about me or my sample designs that I did for him, that made him choose me. But I am terribly grateful and thankful that he did.

public thanks to Belinda

yvette — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:16:03 +0000

When we started planning to go away for three months, a big question for me was what I was going to do with my business for that time. I couldn’t just up and leave, or temporarily shut it down, as the beginning of the year is a time when many new classes start, and often people rush to buy supplies for the new things they will learn that year. I also knew that my book would be out at around that time.

I started to search for someone to run the business for me while I was away. I had a few ideas, but I soon found the PERFECT person.

Belinda is one of the other mums from school, and her daughter is great friends with my daughter. She has a crafty bent (and I mean that in the nicest possible way!) so while she’s not a stitcher herself, she’s a creative person. I knew that she was very capable, and on top of all that, she’s just lovely.

That was enough for me.

So I asked her if she’d be interested in taking over the running of my business for me while I was away. She was. So just before we went, we had the big hand-over. I don’t think she wanted me to know, but my husband and I could tell that she was quite worried about it all.

I would like to to report though, that Belinda has done a STERLING job. If you’ve contacted my business at any time in the last three months, chances are, it was Belinda who emailed you back, or spoke to you on the phone. Isn’t she lovely?

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Belinda. I am so very grateful that God led me to the perfect person to run my business so admirably. You have been an absolute asset to me. I have loved working with you. Your happy, can-do nature and willingness to do all sorts of new things has been delightful. I knew that everything was in good, capable hands and I didn’t have to worry about a thing.

Happily, Belinda found she enjoyed running a craft business so much that she will be launching her own soon. I’ll let you know when its up and running, as one way of me saying thanks to her.

more stitches for my left-handed stitch dictionary

yvette — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:58:00 +0000

Today I have had the pleasure of resuming work on my left-handed embroidery book. After a long run of bad health, things have improved so much that I feel well enough to work again. It’s quite exciting as I have been lamenting for some time that nothing has been happening with my book.

I spent the day writing the instructions and drawing the diagrams for Antwerp edging stitch. It was quite fun, and I really like it as a stitch. It makes a lovely knotted edging. I also had a look at Armenian edging stitch, but wasn’t happy with how it was forming. There has to be some trick with the needle that I am missing, because at the moment it seems very awkward and time-consuming. I’ll have to experiment a bit further.

Some time ago I consulted embroidery teacher extraordinaire, Carolyn Pearce, who has an amazingly large repertoire of stitches that she regularly employs in her embroidery designs, about her suggestions for stitches that I should include in my book. She gave me a huge long list, many of which I was relieved to find were already on my own list (meaning I didn’t have to add them!), but also with a good selection of stitches that I hadn’t thought to include.

Carolyn, who is a right-hander, is very sympathetic to the plight of left-handed embroiderers in her classes. She told me, “I have taught myself how to stitch like a left-hander… in order to help them. That way I can tell when a stitch will feel awkward when executed in a right-hand fashion. Years ago I was at a class where 3 were left handers – the tutor couldn’t help them – just left them to their own devices. I realized that this just was not good enough!”

Thanks to Carolyn for her assistance with the book. I truly appreciate it.

If you have any suggestions for stitches that you would like to see included in my left-handed stitch dictionary, please leave your suggestion in the comments section. I’m still accepting suggestions, and will be for some time yet.

Public thanks: Miss Gurney

yvette — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:47:00 +0000

I would like to pay tribute to one of my textiles teachers. Miss Gurney was my teacher for several years when I was doing Textiles and Design at school. She was a great teacher, and taught me a lot about machine sewing, hand sewing and hand embroidery.

Textiles was one of my favourite subjects at school, and was where I was first introduced to Hardanger embroidery (apart from me being very interested in what I saw of it in The Readers Digest Guide to Needlework).

We all had to do a major embroidery project in Year 10. We did a sample of cross stitch, blackwork, shadow embroidery and Hardanger. I LOVED the hardanger, and embarked on a massive project (see right), which I relished every minute of.

Miss Gurney was always an encouragement to me. We also did a smocked baby’s dress in Year 10 (I think!), and I am still grateful to her for teaching me how to do a very gorgeous hand-sewn placket for the back opening.

There was one day that I’m sure Miss Gurney was ruing the day she’d ever met me. I was using one of the overlockers (sergers) in class, and for some reason the threads kept breaking and Miss Gurney had to keep rethreading it. I don’t think I was very popular that day!

So thank you Miss Gurney for being such an inspiration to me. I really enjoyed your classes, and as you can see, I took what you taught me, and absolutely RAN with it! I’m extremely grateful to you.