Another enjoyable afternoon with my stitching buddies from Hull & East Riding Embroiderers’ Guild for our August meeting. Erm …yes I know that it was a few weeks ago! In fact our September meeting is next week LOL. Which reminds me I must get that organised and the Zoom links and plan sent out to everyone . Anyway, we decided on a simple embroidery stitch challenge inspired by a shape.
We are a small branch and so the majority of our meetings are where we bring our own stitching. We can’t often afford speakers so they are an infrequent special treat for us, and anyway, all that has been long-since cancelled. So I have very much enjoyed our monthly virtual meetings where we have set a specific challenge each time. Most have been around a simple theme or simple embroidery stitch.
Inspired By A Repeating Rectangle
For this embroidery stitch challenge I decided to base my shape around a rectangle and used some of my business cards to arrange 4 rectangles and draw around them. I had dyed a piece of closely woven cotton in a shade of yellow with the crinkle marks left in it for texture like tie-dying. I backed it with a piece of natural wadding. I often do this as it gives a nice ‘soft’ finish, especially to small pieces like this.
I looked in my thread collection and chose DMC stranded cotton Coloris variegated shade 4510
Then I decided I would use simple straight stitches to outline and fill the arranged and intersecting rectangles. I was ready to get started!
Meeting Time!
We followed our now ‘usual’ meeting format. 30 minutes on Zoom to catch up and chat and show what we have been stitching on that month. Then we make sure everyone knows what they are doing for the challenge and we end the Zoom meeting.
Time to start my simple embroidery stitch challenge!
I cracked on and stitched for 2 hours and was really pleased with my progress.
Then it was back into Zoom to show what we had created.
As usual, everyone had created something unique and different. Great progress had been made. I then decided to continue with the embroidery that evening and reflected on what I had achieved. I have been so busy working on my business and producing my podcast and related marketing activities that as usual, my embroidery time is limited. And of course, I love being outside so I have even less time available to stitch. BUT that just makes it all the more enjoyable for me when I do MAKE time for my creative hobby.
So just a quick post to share what I had made. And writing this post has made me keen to pick it up again and carry on. I want to get it finished this week before our next meeting and our next stitching challenge begins!
This is where I had got to when I wrote this post.
Improve Your Zoom Meeting Skills
If you need help to run Zoom meetings, or to feel confident running your own online presentations and classes, then please contact me for help.
I have a detailed course to help you confidently use all the features of Zoom in a creative way to make your virtual meetings safe, well organised and enjoyable for your members. It is still on it’s special ‘lockdown’ price of £49 so that price isn’t a barrier to learning these essential online skills. I also explain how to improve your Zoom meetings for embroidery and demonstrations by improving your lighting, sound, using a range of suitable tripods and stands, and how to provide ‘close ups’ of your work. There is much more to running an enjoyable and quality Zoom session, particularly for paying participants, than just sending out a Zoom link!
I have include more details in a previous post
https://www.stitcherystories.com/how-to-run-online-embroidery-meeting/
and here is the link to buy my course
https://bookme.name/susanweeks/learn-how-to-use-zoom
Ok it’s goodbye from me – I’m off to do some embroidery and get this simple embroidery stitch challenge finished.
Cheers, Sue