2018 Prim Stitchers Society Retreat

Finally I have the time to post my pics from the Prim Stitchers Society Retreat. Warning: This post is picture intensive!!! This year's retreat took place in Harrisburg, PA which is only a hop, skip and a jump from Hersey. Several of us arrived a day or two prior to the retreat and naturally we had to pay a visit to the Hersey chocolate factory!

Everyone came away happy and with a wee bit of chocolate in their possession. The retreat started off with the traditional meet and greet. During this time our sweet framer Patti Nicolosi brings with her some of the pieces we had sent prior to retreat and has a sort of show and tell of our framed works.

Friday morning marks the beginning of classes, followed by the Merchant Mall. This year I volunteered to look after Robert Lehay's booth since he was unable to make the retreat this year. Ridgeley and Terri outdid themselves on this year's market. It was amazing!!

Fellow stitchers taking part in a class offered by Lori Brechlin

This booth is Teresa's Primitive Treasures and besides her own work, it features work done by the members of Primitive Handmade Mercantile.

Next up are in order from top to bottom are Kathy Barrick's booth, Beth Seal of Summer House Stitche Works, and Lori Brechlin of Notforgotten Farm.

Kathy Barrick

Beth Seal

 Summer House Stitche Works

Summer House Stitche Works

 Notforgotten Farm

 Notforgotten Farm

Notforgotten Farm

As you can see, Lori was busy,

flying around the market on her broom!

The next group of booths are Niky Faurauto of Niky's Creations, Bonnie Woomer of The Nebby Needle and Willow Hill Samplings. Niky was the first international vendor that has taken part in the market. She made the long trek from Italy!

Niky's Creations

 Niky's Creations

Niky's Creations

The Nebby Needle

 The Nebby Needle

Ridgely checking out The Nebby Needle

Willow Hill Samplings

Next we have Truffle Pigs, Jan Alexander of Tree of Life Samplings and Faye Riggsbee.....The Carolina Stitcher.

 Truffle Pigs

Truffle Pigs

Jan and her daughter Beth

 Tree of Life Samplings

Tree of Life Samplings

The Carolina Stitcher

 The Carolina Stitcher

The Carolina Stitcher

Next group is Becky Noland of Lucy Beam, Rob LeHay Shaker Boxes, Dixie Sampler Hand Dyed Fabrics. Dixie also featured some of April Whitaker Taylor's work. The last booth is Teresa Kogut's.

 Lucy Beam

Lucy Beam

Rob LeHay Shaker Boxes

 Dixie Sampler

April Whitaker Taylor

 Teresa Kogut

Teresa Kogut

Teresa Kogut

These were just the shops on the outside of the room. The remaining shops occupied the centre of the market mall.

Elizabeth Talledo of Dames of the Needle

 Lela Mae Designs

Patti Nicolosi and her sister Cathy 

of By My Hand Needl'werks

with yours truly

All the remaining center of the room was occupied by the market craft shop Crafter's Gallery. I swear they brought their whole store with them! As you can see there were charts, fabric (as seen in the previous pic behind us), floss, floss and more floss as well as needleart accessories.

The market mall was like a stitcher/prim artist's dream!! Everything and anything you could think of was there. I can't wait to see next year's. 

The remaining pics are of the stitching lounge and of the many friends I was so blessed to see.

 Pam, me, Cathy, Ridgely and Jenn

Theresa Meloon (Tee), Cindy and Beth

 Nan Lewis

 Jenn hard at work finishing off her class project

 JoAnn

Faye Riggsbee

 Pam, a fellow Canadian

Michelle unwrapping her gift exchange

So as you can see, a good time was had by all.Following the final banquet the gift exchange took place. Lots of laughter and lots of memories to cherish. Many thanks to Terri(Dixie), Ridgely and Cathy for making this the best retreat ever!!

June Smalls SAL and Pressies!

June has been a busy month so far and I only have one finish to show you which was actually completed in May but was for a gift exchange in June so I couldn't show it earlier. As many of you may know, I participated in the Prim Stitchers Society Retreat. One of the fun events and the highlight of the final banquet is a gift exchange. Participation is not mandatory and all that is required is to stitch and finish a small item, wrap it and include a little card introducing yourself. The gifts are all placed on a table and the fun begins! When your gift is chosen by someone it then becomes your turn to go next and choose a gift. As you announce who your gift is from then that person goes next and so on.

I can show you the gift that I finished but I really have no idea who actually received it. I saw her reading my card but the room was so full of people and noisy so I never did get her name.

This is My Sewing Tools, designed by Pheasant Street Samplers. I cheated and used the same finish as my stitch from last year mostly because I was running out of time! I sure hope the recipient liked her gift!

The gift I received was from Linda Hudlow and it's a lovely little storage box on which she placed her stitched finish. It's a design by Lori Brechlin of Notforgotten Farms.

I love my gift Linda and I think you did a wonderful job on it!

In addition to the retreat exchange there was a private birthday gift exchange that took place between a close knit group of friends. Rather than mailing our birthday gifts to one another, we choose to bring our gifts to retreat and do a giant birthday gift exchange. It saves on postage and it's oh so much fun! Just like Christmas morning! Here's a few pics:

Poor Michelle was banished to the doorway of the room when one of the gifts contained something that she was having an allergic reaction to. Jenn had brought each of us an oyster containing a fresh water pearl but they had been preserved with a small amount of formaldehyde to which our friend started to react. Fortunately the reaction was short lived and not severe.

Here is a sampling of what I received: 

 The stitched item on the left is actually a tape measure!

 A lovely velvet needlebook

Inside my needlebook

 Stitching on the reverse of the piece with my initials

Overdyed floss, scissors and fobs, buttons, threadwinder. floss keep,

and those buttons on the right are actually floss waxers!

Two lovely charts which I've had my eye on:

Shakespeare's Peddler Ragamuffin and

Goode Huswife Angel of Tulips

I was overwhelmed by all that loveliness!! I am truly blessed to have such lovely and generous friends!
In addition I received one other unexpected gift. One of the booths at the retreat was Robert LeHay's Shaker Boxes. Rob was unable to attend in person but sent on a selection of his boxes for display. I was asked if I would look after his booth one day at the market and hand out order sheets for anyone interested in placing an online order with Rob. What I wasn't expecting was that after the market was finished I was told that I could pick a box from any of the ones in the display as a thank you from Rob for looking after the booth.
This was my choice:

I decided on a natural finish box rather than one of his painted ones. This particular one is an eight inch box and has an insert on the lid in which you can place a stitched piece. I absolutely love it and was thrilled! Robert's craftmanship is second to none and I highly recommend his boxes. Follow my link above and check out his beautiful website. You'll be glad you did!

Now I'm working on a small for my granddaughter over this Canada Day weekend. To all my Canadian stitching friends I send wishes for a happy Canada Day!!

Edit: I forgot to ask.... Does anyone know if the small SAL is still taking place? I noticed that there have been no postings on the home page now for a few months.

June WIPocalypse

June seems to have arrived rather quickly but its summer weather sure took its time arriving! It's been so unseasonable that I wasn't quite sure what to pack for my Prim Stitchers Society Retreat. Fortunately their weather in Pennsylvania seemed to be a little warmer than ours at home so summer attire prevailed. Before I get to the retreat I'll show you a pic of what I'm working on at the moment.
 Last month I had completed all save the border on LaDDa Awake My Soul. The border was a bit time consuming and it was the sole project that I worked on during retreat but I still didn't complete it until shortly after I returned home. It was a real hit with all the ladies at retreat a lot of it due to the fabric I chose.

The fabric is a Silkweaver evenweave which I found in my stash. I remembered that it was a Silkweaver but had to go onto their site to look up the colour which I believe is Autumn Blush. The fabric makes the colours pop and I love how it turned out. Time to save for some framing!

At retreat I picked up one of Nan Lewis' new designs (Threadwork Primitives) called Live Simply. As soon as I finished up Awake I started in on the new design. This past weekend I put in the final stitches.

This was a sweet little stitch which I hope to finish in a frame as Nan has with some ticking fabric and lace.Just click on my link to see her finish.

My latest start is by Heartstring Samplery and is called All The Pretty Flowers. 

Sorry, it's not the greatest pic but the lighting around here is pretty lousy right now. It's a sweet little summery piece that shouldn't take too long to complete.

After writing this I have decided to put up a separate post for the retreat. There are just too many pics to add and my computer isn't co-operating at the moment. So watch for a post to go up in the next few days with all my retreat goodies! See you then!

Edit: I forgot to say that I have loved reading all of your comments but suddenly I am not receiving them in my email any longer and I'm not able to reply to them. I've checked my settings and all is well so I don't know what has happened. Is anyone else having problems with this issue?

May WIPocalypse

May has involved a fair amount of stitching for me but only during the first week of the month and the latter 10 days or so. The rest of the month I've been dealing with vertigo which sidelines me from time to time. 
Last month's question, What is your longest running WIP?, involved my digging into my journal of starts. I knew which piece had been hiding out in the closet but I wasn't sure just when I had started it originally. As it turned out it was A Mon Ami Pierre Paradis Perdu which I started stitching in January of 2012. Now 2012 was the first full year following my retirement and when I look back at my journal I see that I kind of went overboard on stitching that year. Paradis Perdu was indeed lost in all the shuffle and brought out roughly once per year thereafter for some token stitching. However nothing has been added to it since early 2015. 

Once more I dug it out and gave it some love. Will it get finished this year? One only knows!
These are the before pics.

I've concentrated on the alphabet mostly this month and the apple tree. Here's my  progress so far.

I also picked up Awake My Soul and it's very close to completion. All that remains is the border.

May is a month of birthdays here..... my daughter-in-law, me and my son. This past Sunday we joined Chris and Violet in a joint celebration of our birthdays as well as a delayed Mother's Day celebration. Chris and V have just returned from their honeymoon so after a great dinner at Pub Italia in Ottawa we went back to their place to view all the photos from their trip. 

Earlier in the month I paid a visit to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa. I try to make it to this event at least every couple of years. Most of the tulips can be seen at Dow's Lake which is a great location for them.

Tulips are a favourite of mine and I enjoy seeing all the new varieties.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Harrisburg, PA for the 2018 Prim Stitchers Society Retreat. I'm so excited and can hardly wait to see all my friends. Next month I should have lots of pics from the event. Until then, have a great month. Summer has arrived!

May Smalls

There's been an awful lot of stitching and finishing of smalls going on here during the month of May. In fact it's probably the most that I've ever completed during one month. Of course it was all due to my procrastination and another bout of vertigo which set me on the back burner for a couple of weeks. In any case I had 5 gifts to complete either the finishing of or the stitching and finishing of before I leave for the Prim Stitchers Society Retreat next week. One gift is for the optional exchange which takes place at the end of the retreat while the other four are birthday gifts for friends whose birthdays have either recently passed or are up and coming. I'll hold off posting a pic of the retreat gift in case anyone who is attending spots it on here. The other ladies don't generally check out my blog so I think it's safe to post pics of the gifts.

First up is a piece I stitched back in early 2017 by Blackbird Designs called Remember Me. I knew exactly who I wanted to gift it to but only completed the finishing this week.

Next is a sweet little pinkeep from the Summer House Stitcheworks series Fragments in Time. I personalized this one with my initials as well as my friend's.

The third piece is a design by Shakespeare's Peddler called Jenny Bean's Pin Tuffet. I didn't have a small tart tin or base with which to make a tuffet so instead I made a small pinwheel. I improvised and used lace trim instead of ribbon since I didn't have any that worked. I love how it turned out!

The final finish is appropriately called Bee Heart and is a design by E SubRosa. I have never ever completed a heart shaped pillow and this was a challenge for me since I am neither a great finisher or into sewing. It didn't turn out too badly though. It's just a little wonky on one side but I know my friend won't care and will love it.

Next month I'll post a pic of my retreat exchange gift and any new smalls I get to. 
At this time I want to thank each and every one of you who left comments on my recent posts. I really appreciate them and usually try to respond to your comments but this darn vertigo has kept me away from a lot of reading, stitching and keyboarding. The eye movements just aggravate things. There are a number of reasons why we suspect that I've had a recurrence but it takes time and rest to get rid of it. I'm feeling a little better this past week so hopefully it's on its way out. 
Take care and keep those comments coming. I love hearing from you!