Woodlawn Photos from 2010 and 2011

Lots of locals exhibit at Woodlawn Plantation each March and many of them use the same framer, Brit's Gallery.  I just realized that the framer's website has photos of some of the Woodlawn pieces they have framed.  Click on Woodlawn 2010 and Woodlawn 2011 to see some nice stitching!
http://www.thebritsgallery.com/

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

A Bit More Woodlawn 2011

Karen was shocked to find she got ribbons!  Many congratulations on some fine stitching.
http://thenimbleneedle.blogspot.com/2011/04/woodlawn-needlework-exhibit-march-2011.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Cindy Wins at Woodlawn

Cindy just got back from a visit to Woodlawn Plantation's exhibit (sadly the last day was March 31st) and writes about her visit here.  She won two ribbons!  Congratulations to her and to everyone who exhibited at the needlework show.  You have the gratitude of all the stitchers who visited both in person and virtually.
http://barefootneedlepoint.blogspot.com/2011/04/and-ribbon-goes-to.html


Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Arlene at Woodlawn 2011

Arlene's Lace and Original Pieces

Despite the lack of a Flickr album of Woodlawn award winners this year, I do have some Woodlawn photographs for you to see of Arlene's three entries.  Look carefully, for each piece is a riff (using a different form of needlework) on a piece of lace Arlene made. Unfortunately, Woodlawn doesn't take lace in the exhibit so Arlene didn't send the original inspiration piece, just the three designs inspired by it.  However, she graciously agreed to share the original lace design with us here on Blog.

Arlene writes:

"For the effort that I put into writing artistic statements (which I never have before because I've never submitted an original piece before), it is sort of a shame that visitors can't read more of what stitchers were thinking about their pieces. Even commercial designs - sometimes I just want to know what inspired a person to stitch a particular piece.

Bobbin Lace

I've attached 5 pictures. One picture is my four pieces together, and then a separate picture of each of them. (The lace wasn't shown at Woodlawn - they don't take bobbin lace.) Copied below was what I wrote for my artistic statements. The first two paragraphs I repeated on each piece and then there was a separate paragraph about the specific piece. "

Artistic Statements sent to Woodlawn 

"As I imagine to be true of many who exhibit at Woodlawn, my interest in the needle arts is not limited to one particular type. Moreover, that interest extends beyond work with needles to the art of bobbin lace – making lace the way it was made before machines. A couple of years ago, I picked up a French bobbin lace pattern book titled La Dentelle Torchon by Martine Piveteau and was immediately struck by one particular pattern – a geometric design so beautiful that I was determined to create it. As my bobbins weaved back and forth over the months, I began to envision this exquisite design in different needlework techniques. That is to say, what could my needle create?

Good old-fashioned graph paper, pencil, ruler, and a little bit of math helped me deconstruct the original design. I wanted to size my needlework interpretations to be nearly identical to the original lace piece, and I pictured the final pieces together on the wall with the effect of connection, interpretation, balance, and structure. Eliminating the idea of 'color' was simple; the threads of these pieces would range from white (bobbin lace) to light grey (pulled thread) to dark grey (canvaswork) to black (blackwork).

For this blackwork piece, I wanted to preserve the lacy effect of the bobbin lace while turning the colors inside out, so to speak – black on white, instead of white on black. I knew that the straight stitches of blackwork could have allowed me almost literally to reproduce the thread patterns of bobbin lace, but I found myself wanting to make the piece its own creation. Instead of following the exact lines and twists of bobbin lace thread, I played around with many blackwork patterns, in books and in my imagination, to find combinations of density and openness that would recreate the look and feel of the lace without mimicking it literally. This decision allowed me to realize the goal of interpreting a piece of art through a different thread technique.

Blackwork

After lots of trial and error with various threads and shades of grey, I realized that this canvaswork interpretation of the bobbin lace needed to focus on one deep shade, with metallic accents conveying the lightness of the open spaces as well as emphasizing the overall geometric structure. The dense areas of the lace were created with different stitches on the canvas to make solid areas and the open lacy parts were created with the lightness and airiness of a fine metallic thread. As is true with all three of the pieces I am submitting to Woodlawn this year, my goal was to recreate the look and feel of the bobbin lace without mimicking it literally. This project helped me to understand how it is possible to interpret a piece of art through different thread techniques.

Counted Canvaswork

I originally planned this light grey pulled thread piece to be a Hardanger design. That is to say, the open lacy areas of the original bobbin lace design were going to become Kloster blocks with decorative filling stitches. I worked the dense areas in satin stitch, but then I found myself stuck when it came time to cut threads. The math worked out on paper, but I realized the look of thread on fabric would be all wrong. Wisely, I decided to set this piece aside – allowing my mind to work through the technical problems before I did any cutting of threads.

Pulled Thread 

Eventually, I came to realize that there would be no effective solution using the traditional count of Hardanger stitches if I wanted the overall dimensions to be the same as the bobbin lace. It finally dawned on me that I needed to change my thinking if I was to find a way to reproduce the airy open areas of the lace with light grey thread on light grey fabric. The stitches of pulled thread embroidery made this possible – a technique related to Hardanger but one that would allow a little more flexibility with the math. I learned an important lesson from this piece – the need in any needlework project to keep an open mind in the design phase because many factors can drive the final solution."

Arlene is starting her next large project--Jean Hilton’s ScottLee. I expect we’ll have more wonderful stitching from her to see at Woodlawn 2012!

Arlene, thanks for all the work you did pulling this together for me to publish.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Donna's Woodlawn 2011 Report

Read about Donna's visit to Woodlawn here.
http://majtravaux.blogspot.com/2011/03/woodlawn-needlework-show-2011.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Kurdy Briggs at Woodlawn 2011

Cleopatra's Eyes by Threedles

I've already mentioned how much I liked the two original geometric pieces that Kurdy Briggs displayed at Woodlawn this year.  Turns out she is a designer of counted canvaswork and the piece I liked best (Cleopatra's Eyes) will be available as a chart shortly.  The photo above is as close in color as I can get it to the very sophisticated color scheme of the original blue ribbon winner.  The photo came from Scarlet Thread's interview with Kurdy.
http://stitchything.blogspot.com/2011/03/kurdy-biggs-wins-big-at-woodlawn.html 

Here is her website.  She produces various colorways of her designs, which is a nice touch, but let me tell you, the original of Cleopatra's Eyes is the one for me!  Here you can see a good photo of her other piece on display at Woodlawn through March 31--Looking Glass, which is pastels on black in the original I saw.
http://www.threedles.com/newsite/welcome.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

A Quilter Goes to Woodlawn

I discovered this report on a quilter's trip to Woodlawn this morning while looking to see if the promised Flickr photo album has been created yet.  (The answer to that seems to be No.)
http://pursuitofquilts.blogspot.com/2011/03/woodlawn-needlework-exhibition.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Happy St. Patrick's Day UPDATED

If you need a little Irish green this morning, check out Jody's newest shamrocks design.
http://jodydesigns.typepad.com/jodyinthestudio/2011/03/needlepoint-shamrocks-in-the-round.html

Pocket Full of Stitches is having a Cooper Oaks trunk show.  They have posted a ton of bright canvases from the designers which you can see in these two links. UPDATE:  PFOS has added a third, fourth and fifth blog entry on this trunk show so I've added new links.
http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/cooper-oaks-is-here.html

http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/cooper-oaks-part-2.html

http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/cooper-oaks-part-3.html

http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/cooper-oaks-part-4.html

http://pocketfullofstitches.blogspot.com/2011/03/cooper-oaks-part-5.html

In Woodlawn news, Susan writes of her fun day out with a friend.  There's not much about the actual needlework exhibit, but she has information about a bead shop close to Woodlawn Plantation that those who are planning on visiting will want to check out.
http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2011/03/meeting-elizabeth.html

Remember, turn left exiting Woodlawn and drive through two sets of traffic lights.  You'll see a McDonald's in the strip mall on the right.  Turn there and look to the right when you are facing McDonald's.  That's where In Stitches is located.  The shop carries counted thread and knitting supplies as well as a good number of painted canvases.  They have lots of threads and tools and it's a wonderful shopping experience before or after the show.
http://www.institchesneedlework.com/

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Whoops!

I forgot to provide the link to the blog Arlene found that talks a bit about how Woodlawn Plantation's yearly exhibit is organized.  Here it is:
http://maggiebsmocks.typepad.com/smocking/2011/03/my-connection-to-the-woodlawn-needlework-exhibition.html

While I'm mentioning additions to Blog, I also updated the CH Stitch Guides blog with a short mention of what Art Needlepoint calls a stitch guide.  It seems to actually be an emailed (PDF?) file of twenty-two diagrammed stitches with some hints on where to use them, but I haven't seen it in person.  You can read the article here.
http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com/2011/03/art-needlepoints-stitch-guide.html

I don't know what it costs but if you have bought from them in the past year, it is free.  It looks like a second volume is planned.  Please note that Art Needlepoint's canvases are silk screened.  If not having a stitch painted canvas bothers you a lot, their designs are not for you.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

My Trip to Woodlawn 2011 (Part Three)

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

My Trip to Woodlawn (Part Two)

Picking up where I left off last time, it is always interesting to see two very similar pieces hung close together.  Woodlawn always tries to group like items together.  (By the way, you can read much more about how Woodlawn is organized at this blog which Arlene found for us.)
http://maggiebsmocks.typepad.com/smocking/2011/03/my-connection-to-the-woodlawn-needlework-exhibition.html

The small parlor had two Native American Indian pieces -- one of a deerskin outfit with fringe, tassels and beads -- and the other of an Indian woman in front of a string art "dream catcher," also beaded.  I think both of these pieces were embellished cross stitch.  They looked great together!  The same room had a crewel chair lightly covered in the American style with birds.  I was told this was an original design.  Kudos to the stitcher/designer!  The chair was lovely.  Nearby was a set of sandpiper brick covers and a pillow in with a sandpiper design.  Sandpipers are ocean birds.  I had an immediate vision of these adorning someone's seaside cottage.

As always, Woodlawn had several traditional wool rugs.  One was an Elizabeth Bradley floral with 6 panels and the other a leopard patterned all-over design with a fancy red and yellow curved border.  (The border was curved, not the edge of the rug.)  The EB rug looked something like this, except it was made up of single floral squares with the names of the flowers written on the bottom.  This link shows a small version of a rug, not the full thing.  It certainly gives you the flavor of such a rug however!
http://www.needlepoint.com/designers/elizabeth-bradley/cottage-garden-favourites.html

As usual, Woodlawn sets aside the fancy parlor as a display area for Asian-themed designs.  These included kimonos, a nice Mindy Japanese quilt design, and dragons, including a very large Chinese dragon pillow.  There were two koi design pictures, hung together.  I personally liked a long fish pillow done all in metallics (the fish) with a plain regular thread (probably silk/wool) background of seaweed.  The fish sparkled in the sunlight, giving a wet but elegant look to the creature as he swam forever on his pillow.

Because these are traditional designs, don't think only classic pieces were sent in this year!  I saw a very cute stitched license plate that read Needle Ptr, one of Leigh's Floozies (with a lovely green and gold chain link necklace), and a cross stitch framed piece of abstract brush strokes in bold colors.  There were also two stunning original abstracts by Kurdy Biggs.  Both of the Biggs designs were octagon shapes, but one was in pastels on black canvas and the other featured a very sophisticated palette of olive, rust, navy and blue-gray.  Both used complex Hilton stitches to great effect but I have to say I think I'd take the olive octagon home in a heartbeat!  It is tied for my I'd Take It Home If I Could Award this year.

Sadly I can't show you photos of much of the above but the Floozies series is widely shown online.  The one I saw was similar to this except for that gorgeous green and gold chain necklace which seemed to be made up of tiny flat sequins or charms.
http://threadworx.com/floozies

Around the corner is the parlor one passes on the way to the Tea Room if you are having lunch.  There I adored the Alaska Angel piece from In Good Company,
http://np.theneedlepointer.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=76&products_id=5571&zenid=nbr7thd3ufl1ht8uvsdp3cg6b1

but was unable to really study much of the stitching located there.  I did notice a coat of arms banner and several floral pieces I would have loved to study furtner.  The standout was Connie Jordan't ruby slipper pillow, which featured a stitched and stuffed shoe on top of the stitched pillow. It was glitzy and unusual and a great treat to see.

I'm running out of time again, so I'll continue this later....

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Woodlawn 2011: Overall Impressions

This year's Woodlawn exhibit differed from past years' exhibits in that there were many fewer samplers than in the past, and more of those big Mirabilia ladies done in cross stitch than I've seen recently.  (If you don't follow XS, there is an example in the link below.)  When I first started going to the exhibit, these were everywhere but they have died out over the years only to start a comeback this season.
http://yarntree.typepad.com/needlework_news/2011/03/charlotte.html

It seemed to me there was more beadwork and surface embroidery than I've seen recently.  A lot of the show was needlepoint although there were a few pieces of Japanese Embroidery and smocking and some crewel.  The needlepoint designs were both geometric counted canvaswork and painted canvases but there was a significant number of original designs, which makes me very happy indeed!

The counted canvaswork interested me because I saw no Susan Portra charts (for the second year in a row) and only a few Jean Hilton designs.  Instead, there were many more charted pieces designed by folks like Debbie Rowley, Laura Perin, Carole Lake, Ro Pace, Michael Boran, Orna Willis and others I couldn't immediately place.  It seems to me that counted canvaswork is having a renaissance.

The painted canvas pieces were predominately tent stitched.  There were some embellished pieces but not many.  Unlike last year, the majority of the tent stitch pieces seemed to me to have been stitched using the popular silk/wool blends, with some notable exceptions like the large rectangular fish pillow in the main parlor which was beautifully tent stitched in metallics for the fish and solid silk/wool for the seaweed background.

This year I didn't notice any color trends, but as usual, there are enough animal- and Christmas-themed items for them to have their own display rooms.  There were many floral designs and quite a few Asian-themed pieces (although perhaps not as many as in past years).  As usual there were a good number of Halloween pieces but I didn't notice much in the way of Easter rabbit or egg designs.

I was impressed by the number of junior pieces (under 18) this year.      But before I talk about some of the pieces I admired, let's take a break.  I'll be back later with the rest of my Woodlawn report.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Melita's Woodlawn Report

Melita is the first to write about her trip to see the Woodlawn Plantation needlework exhibit.  And she won a ribbon!
http://melitastitches4fun.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/sun-flower-wins-a-3rd-place-ribbon-at-woodlawn/

http://melitastitches4fun.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/woodlawn-roadtrip-2011/

For those who are about to ask, yes, I made my annual trip to Woodlawn over the weekend.  I'm not sure when I'll have it written up, but stay tuned....

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Woodlawn Exhibit Opens

The 2011 Woodlawn Plantation Exhibit opens today, March 2nd.  It runs through the end of March with the exception of Tuesdays.
http://woodlawn1805.org/48th-annual-needlework-exhibition/

Woodlawn is NOT open on Tuesdays so don't go there then hoping to see the needlework exhibit.


Last year Woodlawn put photos of the award winners in an online photo album.  I don't know if this will happen again this year but here is the link to last year's pieces in case you missed them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/preservationnation/sets/72157623455198693/

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com

Woodlawn Exhibit Needs YOU

Nimble Needle writes about this much better than I ever could.
http://thenimbleneedle.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-years-resolution.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow