White Threads

wonderful success

Two wonderful successes to report today. Firstly, the Australian Fistula Fund has now finished tallying the monies received and issuing receipts for the Walk For Women, raising money for The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. The total raised was over $AU86000! Wowee!

Just to clarify, this was the combined total of all participants, not my tally! My sponsors raised an amazing $AU2895 in my name – a far cry from the $1000 I had set as my goal!

Thank you to all who sponsored me in the walk, and know that you have contributed to this fantastic total which will allow many many lives to be changed for the better. I am astounded at the generosity of so many, and their willingness to contribute to this wonderful, worthy cause. Thank you so much!

Rainbow Girl on the beam, with one of her coaches watching on in the background

On Saturday, Rainbow Girl and her team mates competed in their very first gymnastics competition. We knew it was going to be a very large competition and so prepared her for the idea that they should all just have fun and do their best. They were all terribly excited, and we just wanted them to enjoy the event.

Well, enjoy it they did! And we enjoyed watching them too, cheering them on, and marvelling at their poise and skills. They seemed to be doing quite well – when we took notice of their scores, they seemed pretty good.

And so, on to the presentation ceremony. Rainbow Girl achieved 1st place in Vault, 2nd place in beam, 2nd place in bars, and 6th place in Floor! This astonishing result was then topped off by the award of 1st place overall in her division of the competition. We were stunned and shocked – we had no idea that’s what she was capable of! All her team mates received a placing in at least one event, and most of them received multiple placings.

To say we’re proud of them all would be a complete understatement! Congratulations Rainbow Girl and all your team mates!

my film career is over?

Well, they loved our samples. Loved them. (I did too!) But… unfortunately the props lady had rather underestimated the time that each item might take, and our samples took them way over budget. Oh dear.

I guess if you think that something’s going to take an hour or two, and it ends up taking more like 5 or 6, that does make quite a bit of difference to the budget!

So, I think our film careers are over. 🙁

I’m not sure what will happen for the prop that they need. There’s talk of getting the rest done in machine embroidery. So, will you see our samples in the movie when it comes out? I don’t know.

But I guess I have a really good reason to see it now. I still haven’t told you what movie it is, have I? I’m not contractually restricted from telling you, but I don’t want the lovely lady we were dealing with to lose her job either, so I’ll tell you when it comes out. (If I remember!)

All is not lost though. I learned how lovely floche cotton is to work with, and I had a couple of days of interesting problem solving and enjoyable embroidery. And with my film career over, now I can get back to the job at hand – writing the rest of my book!

cotton floche

I used cotton floche for the first time yesterday.

I bought a hank of cotton floche a few years back when I was at AllThreads Embroidery, teaching. It was the first time I’d ever seen it in the flesh, though I had heard of it before. I knew it was pretty hard to come by, so while the opportunity was there, I bought a hank of white.

With the mystery project underway – we’re working on samples – I decided it was the perfect project to try it out on. I needed to work some small satin stitch petals, and I suspected that floche would be perfect for them.

It was a dream to work with! It has a lovely soft twist and a pretty sheen. It stitched up beautifully, and I’m very happy with it. It is quite similar to cotton a broder, but it seems to have more ply making up the strand, and has a softer twist. I’m going to enjoy working with it!

identical foliage

For the mystery project I need to create six to ten identical items. We have been supplied with two possible patterns, and need to work a sample of each for them to choose from. Both of them are floral, and one of them has foliage that is variegated.

My issue is that working the variegated foliage will be most easily done with a variegated thread. BUT, we need to make up to 10 identical copies of it… That means that if I was to use the variegated thread, I’d need 10 identical sections of thread, and use them in exactly the same way.

Hmm… as I’ve been writing this, I’ve just had an idea. I think Gloriana threads usually have about 10 strands. (Just checked, their silks have 12 strands, no less!) Looking down the listing of threads in the linked page, I think that Avonlea *might* work for our purposes.

But now, another thought pops into my head. Gloriana is probably not colourfast, and they might need colourfast thread.

If Gloriana won’t work, then we’re planning to use either a DMC color variations thread, or a Cosmo Seasons thread, and hopefully find an exact repeat of the colour tones further along the thread. I figure that its more likely with a really “commercial” thread rather than a hand-dyed craftsman-type one.

Just a little glimpse into the thought that goes into a project. Its all this problem solving that I particularly love!

mysterious invitation

Last night I received a phone call from someone working on an upcoming dramatic production who needs several identical items, (a “key prop”) embroidered. She couldn’t say what it was for – she could be immediately dismissed from her post – but I have an idea or two.

I don’t usually do commissions, but there were two words she mentioned (a name actually) in connection with the production, that made me immediately think, “oh, wow!”

It was the sort of thing that makes me feel terribly torn: I have a book (that I’m loving doing) to write, yet I’d love to be involved in this mysterious project. So I put my thinking cap on, and emailed my sister (Prue Scott, my co-author on Mountmellick Embroidery: Inspired by Nature) and asked her if she’d like to do it with me, thereby reducing the amount of work I’d need to do personally.

Just a few minutes later the phone rang. “That’ll be Prue,” I said to myself as I went to answer it.

“Yes, in capital letters,” was her greeting.

And so we will. I expect in time I’ll learn more, and be able to share it with you closer to the time where the production is released to the public.

Very mysterious… 🙂

Changes to comment posting

On the weekend I got officially fed up. From about 10pm on Saturday night until about 8am yesterday, I got something like 70 spam comments on this blog. One or two – okay, I can put up with that. 70? No way, I am not going to put up with that!

And so, off came the old antispam plugin (which wasn’t working anymore, and apparently was no longer supported by WordPress) and on went a new one. This one requires you to type in (or copy and paste) a password that is displayed in the comment form. Yes, this will make the process of posting a comment just a little bit longer, but I hope that you will put up with this for me, so that I don’t have to drown in spam comments.

So far it seems to be filtering practically all spam out. However, I need to know that its not also filtering out your real comments. As I often don’t get any comments on the weekend, because I don’t post on the weekend, I haven’t had any come through. It would really help me if you could post a comment for me to make sure that they’re not being filtered out either.

Rather than just making it some boring comment like “Is this working?”, let’s make it a little more interesting. How about telling me what your current embroidery, sewing or crafting project is? Thanks for your help with this!

pre-raphaelite exhibition

Yesterday we went with friends to the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition The Poetry of Drawing at The Art Gallery of NSW. It was fantastic! There was an excellent range of exquisite drawings, watercolours etc.

For the William Morris-ophiles, there was a good selection of his works, including a drawing that looked quite stilted and amateurish compared to the surrounding works of Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabrielle Rosetti, etc!

There were a few beautiful drapery studies. I have always loved drapery studies, probably because I love fabric so much. To see the way people draw folds of fabric and capture the light and dark is always interesting.

I just couldn’t get over how exquisitely detailed some of the drawings were. Gorgeous effects of pencil, pen and ink. And you could get up *really* close and inspect them closely. None of those barriers to keep you back from the work.

If you’re in Sydney before 4th September, do take the opportunity to see this fabulous exhibition.

love lace exhibition

Another great exhibition on in Sydney! From 30th July until April next year, the fabulous Powerhouse Museum will be hosting a lace exhibition entitled Love Lace.

It will feature 130 lace works by 134 artists from 20 countries. Wow! And there will be a huge range of lace making techniques on display from the highly traditional to the not at all traditional! It shows the winning entries and finalists in the Powerhouse Museum International Lace Award (an award I didn’t know existed!) You can read more about the exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum‘s website.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Powerhouse Museum, they have an excellent collection of lace in their Lace Study Centre – I would say one of the jewels in their crown.

This exhibition will be very worthwhile to see, and I suspect will be really inspirational. I’ll definitely be off to see it at some point!

Thanks very much to Helen Davies, who kindly let me know about this exhibition last week.

Portuguese Whitework book cover

Well, I really wasn’t planning on putting this up on the blog just yet. After all, its still way more than six months until the book will be released. But just yesterday I found a black and white picture of it on someone else’s blog. I can’t say I was pleased. However, I can’t withhold the picture of it from you if others aren’t. Sigh.

So, without further ado, here’s the first COLOUR version of the cover of “Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães” by Yvette Stanton (me!) that you will see anywhere on the internet!

'Portuguese Whitework: Bullion Embroidery from Guimarães' by Yvette Stanton, due for release in early 2012.

If you’re interested in going on my special email list just for this book, to receive updates about its progress, you can still sign up. Just let me know in the comments section, or through the contact page on the website.

I might just take this opportunity to remind people of copyright laws. You *can’t* just rip a picture off someone else’s blog, website, book, etc and reproduce it on/in your blog, website, book etc. That is breaking the law. If there is a picture that you want to use, you need to ask and gain permission to do so. Otherwise you are breaching copyright laws.

If you have nicked some of my pictures from my (or anyone else’s) website, blog, books etc, you need to have permission to reproduce them. You have two options: either take them down and just have the text, or ask for my permission. Sorry to come down like a ton of bricks, but it is the law and it exists to protect copyright holders’ rights.

If you are one of those who has asked my permission, thank you for your upholding of the law. Usually I do grant permission.

holiday bliss

I’m back! We had a lovely week away staying with friends on the Gold Coast. It was warm, sunny and lovely up there.

Being about 800km away, we took two days to drive there and back. I decided to see if I could do some stitching in the car. It was too difficult to work the surface embroidery, but I found that working the drawn thread work wrapped bars was quite possible. I got *heaps* done during the car trip! It was wonderful, and a lovely holiday bonus that I hadn’t expected!

I was working on a cushion for my book “Portuguese Whitework”. Its progressing very nicely, and I can’t wait to see it all made up.

Much of the time we did pretty much nothing, which is not something I’m usually very good at doing! We also visited Movie World, and Rainbow Girl (a little thrill seeker) greatly enjoyed some of the roller coasters. The Bookworm preferred the children’s rides, and had a good time with them. My husband and I survived the Superman ride – I kept my eyes shut pretty much the whole time, which made it somewhat bearable!

We also took a day trip to Tambourine Mountain, which we found to be a terrible tourist trap. However, we really did enjoy the Skywalk, a private boardwalk type tourist attraction through the canopy of a rainforest, and then down into the forest floor. It was beautiful and restful, though I can’t say I really enjoyed the feeling of knowing that underneath the strong (but wobbly) mesh of the walk, there was rather a large gap between me and the ground…

Over the next few days I hope to get back on top of things here in the business. I should be able to get all orders that came in while I was away off in the post today. And then I have a mountain of emails to reply to. Please be patient if you’re waiting on hearing from me!

If you’re noticing that there are now no longer any spaces after the commas, that’s because I updated the WordPress software I use to create this blog, last night. For some reason its not playing nicely. I will have to see what can be done to fix this annoyance.