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I love it all: embroidery, canvaswork, quilting, crochet. So much to do, so little time.





Sunday, May 1, 2011

Stitching for Autism

Good Afternoon Dear Blog Readers,

The embroidery guild that I belong to does quite a few community outreach projects, and yesterday they hosted a workshop to benefit autism.  Everyone participating purchased a canvaswork kit that had a chart, fibers, canvas, needles, everything you would need except stretcher bars.  100% of the workshop fee is being donated to Autism Speaks.

The colors (orange, gold, green and blue) are the official colors of "Walk Now for Autism Speaks," the major fundraiser for Autism Speaks.

The stitches on the piece are symbolic of various aspects of autism.  For instance, in this sqare, the sheaf stitch represents children with autism.  The metallic fibers wrapped around the sheaf represent arms hugging or trying to hug a child with autism.  The satin stich arrows represent the intense focus an autistic child sometimes has on one particular subject.

The workshop was 6 hours long, so why, you may be wondering, did I finish only this small square?  (OK, it's not quite finished, there's a tent stitch background--all the canvas will be covered.)  For one thing, I'm a slow stitcher, I had to frog several times, and then there was a lot of conversation, lunch, more conversation, treats... you get the picture.  It was a very fun day stitching with a great group of gals.  So now I have yet another WIP, and this is one that is just going to have to "take a number"!

In other news from WIP-land, I have made a little bit of progress on my Soar SAL.




We now have mom and dad looking after the eaglets (and a good thing, too, I was tired of their incessant demands for fresh fish and squirrel), and it appears that they may actually be in a tree and not a birdbath after all.  The black ground is really a challenge, but it's not impossible to find the correct hole, just really difficult sometimes.  But I will persevere on this one because it's a SAL.

Last but not least, I visited my LNS this past week to get some overdyed floss to subsitute for several of the DMC colors on the above project, and I seem to have come home with a little extra stash:



"Red Hot Peppers" is a Laura J. Perin design for canvaswork and it looks like it will be great fun to stitch.  "Broom Hilda" is a cute little witch design worked on 28-count linen over 1, made into a whisk broom band.  Everyone needs one of those, don't they?  Brenda Gervais (she of the Soar Sampler) is the designer.

That's it for now.  Hope you are all having a really great start to your May.



1 comment:

Salaneuloja said...

I am so happy the eaglets got parents! You're a master stitcher. Black on black is the most disgusting stitching I know.