Swimming lessons are over and we are well into our summer weather. I did not finish either my Dresden garden piece or the baby quilt, but I did make progress on both. And my granddaughter enjoyed her lessons as you can see in this photo of her practicing jumping off the edge of the pool.
On the baby quilt I finished the quilting on the blue background and I quilted a variety of flowers in the grassy area on the bottom of the quilt. I marked both of the outside borders. The inside yellow border has small hearts and the outside green border has a swirling pattern. There are a lot of stitches in those patterns so it may take a bit to finish. The baby is due in one week so we’ll see if I get it finished!
Our group met yesterday. One of us has completely finished the piece. I am on section 5 of the stitching. There are 13 sections. Section 5 was giving me a little bit of trouble. You create two rows of stitching at a time, but when you get to the end of a row and start on the next row you need to be careful where you place your stitches. The first stitch of the next row actually skips a thread and the second stitch moves up into that skipped thread area. I ended up pulling out an entire row because I didn’t skip that thread. I made the same mistake again but only had to remove a few stitches because I caught it in time.
One of the good things about being a member of EGA is being able to do these group correspondence courses. Another benefit is being able to share your stitching with others. One of the requirements of each chapter is to be involved with Community Outreach. Our group has had a relationship for the last three years with a local library. We provide two projects each summer for their Teen Program. On Thursday of this week I was at the library helping with our second project for the summer. We did a fun cat toy project using felt and a variety of embroidery stitches. We had a nice group of teens- I think around 15 of them- who were all able to finish their projects within the two hour time frame.
I was chatting with one of the teens and asked her if she did any stitching. She told me no, she was a hockey player. I had to smile at that! I told her you could be both a hockey player and a stitcher. I was pleasantly surprised when at the end of the class she asked to bring home materials to make two more of the cat toys. In a technology focused world, it was nice to see so many young people working with their hands and enjoying it!
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