I've written about my overall impressions of the items sent to the Woodlawn Plantation exhibit already. Now let's talk about what I saw there. I'll post links when there is supplemental material you should see.
The photo above is Carol's stumpwork design which won a blue ribbon. She kindly gave me an old photo to share with you. I hope you can see the delicate dragonfly and the lovely flower petals (and the charming caterpillar). Woodlawn doesn't hand out real blue ribbons any more. I'm glad about that because often the ribbons would hang over the piece and hide the best parts, but it makes it harder to find the winners. Blue stickers on the name tags are hard to spot in Woodlawn's less than ideal display conditions.
The first thing I noticed when I arrived at Woodlawn were the very cute little linen pillows that had short sayings like "Eat locally" or "Keep our air clean" or "Be Kind to Animals" on them. They were the essence of the modern sampler and all stitched by Juniors, perhaps in a class? These little stuffed pillows are symbolic of the interesting ways the cross stitch and sampler stitchers are pursuing their art. I saw two spectacular caskets, which are chest-like boxes stitced with typical sampler motifs. Usually there are stitched accessories called Smalls inside as part of the set. One casket had its fob, needlecase, scissors sheath, etc. on display next to it. There was also an upright jewelry chest type piece covered in floral motifs. These are works of art. I didn't find a photo of any of the ones I saw online but Betsy Morgan's photo of her latest casket will show you the general style of these amazing pieces.
http://willinghandsstitching.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-finally-finished.html
These weren't the only unusual counted thread pieces, either. Melita mentioned Constance Tobias' stitched book in her Woodlawn report. It looked to be stitched on linen, then bound together into a 6-8 page book with what appeared to be 17th Century style Biblical motifs. The same glass case held other fascinating pieces, including two of Catherine Jordan's river boxes. You can see those on Catherine's website (the first two items). These are astounding in person.
http://catherinesdesigns.tumblr.com/
There were also beaded cuff bracelets and Susan's 5x5 embellished beaded stumpwork pieces. You can see some of Susan's squares shown in the link below in her lacing tutorial. Besides the stumpwork girl in a teacup, there was a pastel blue and silver star wand piece, a square featuring a set of painter's easels with their individual drawings, and my favorite--beaded birds among pink and blue flowers.
http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2011/02/lacing.html
I found another embellished box in the first parlor. This one was mermaid-themed with beads and stumpwork. The smalls belonging to this mermaid casket were decorated with mermaid and shell motifs. The same room had Susan's Your Majesty piece on display. You can see her and read about her here.
http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2011/02/becoming-queen-part-ii.html
The last piece I want to mention today, still in the small first parlor, was a version of Michele Robert's stumpwork tulip, done in mauve-pink. It was lovely!
Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
