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This piece of hardanger was made around 1985 or so from a pattern from Nordic Needle. I was stunned to see they had a website! Wow! I took a peak and see that they recently had a needleworking summit which you can learn about here. If you scroll lower on the page, you’ll see a piece that looks similar to the one above. I guess one could say these hardanger designs are timeless.

There’s no date on this; however, I believe it’s also from around the same time period.  The embroidery is framed within a serving tray that I gave my mom as a gift.  She has it hanging on her wall in one of her bedrooms. This tray is about 14″ square.

This was taught by Joan Masterson, another NJ teacher with whom I took many classes.

This is pulled work on linen. This was the result of a class taken with Ilse Altherr of Summit, NJ.  Does anyone know if she is still teaching? I’d love to tell her that I still have the pieces I made with her!

This is a long table runner that also took a chunk of time to make. The design is from a Burda book of embroidery.

This handbag was another of Ilse’s designs.  I never used the handbag. It’s been in acid-free tissue paper in a bag for many years! Oh, I should find and photograph a holiday angel that Ilse designed and taught. It’s very pretty — white linen, drawn and pulled work with pale ribbons.

The significance of this piece, a kit by Elsa Williams, is that was my first won a Best of Show ribbon in a NJ State Fair many years ago.  I made the piece around 1979 or so.

This is an old notebook cover (pre-marriage, and I’m married 31 years).  The inside of the book are page age after page of stitched samples within page protectors.

I have several notebooks and magazine holders filled with notes, lessons, stitched samples, and all kinds of stuff from those years.  I was also in a program called Hands On.  I still have all of the linen and beautiful threads from that program.  And I still have all of the issues of Fancy Work magazines from The World In Stitches! I loved that stuff and clearly am unable to part with any of it.

Mary Fry was another teacher I was lucky to have a class with (I know she passed away some years back).  Looking back at those years, I’m grateful to the many teachers who patiently taught me various techniques, and who emphasized the importance of using quality materials and keeping notes. If any of you recognize any of the names of those I had classes with (Edith Anderson Feisner was the woman who I took classes with in gold metal work; I made two jewelry box lids shown in one of the prior posts from that work), please let me know. I’d love to thank them and let them know I’ve always been grateful to them. This work is far from high tech or cool, but I still am very fond it.

Enough of the past, it’s time to get back to the current. In that regard, the piece I recently finished for the 8 That Create group is a far cry from the work shown in this and my prior two posts. That will be coming soon!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Embroidery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.