I was in Sydney at the end of May to do a weekend stitching class in stumpwork. Jane Nicholas designed this class to teach at the EGA in California a few years ago. When finished it can fit into a paperweight and is called 'California poppy and bumble bee'. It is a perfect little beginner's class. At least to my mind. On a small piece of satin, and across two days, you get to try out a whole range of stumpwork techniques. Like my first piece, it really is intended to be a kind of sampler. It's just that Jane designs them so well, you end up with something beyond a sampler.
Jane gives you a photo of the completed piece and the image is bigger than the real life image, so you get an opportunity to really look at the details as you stitch. Sometimes that can be a bit daunting because she is so experienced and accomplished in this art form. On any new adventure you have to start somewhere and while it is nice to learn from the masters, it isn't particularly helpful to compare oneself to them! So I didn't.
I had a lovely time in the class. Even though it was advertised as a beginners class there were at least three experienced stumpwork embroiderers attending (two of whom sat at my table), and there was one woman who had never attended any stumpwork classes but who had completed an entire picture frame sized stumpwork embroidery just from following the instructions in one of Jane's books (most impressive).
One of my favourite parts of the whole weekend was when the ladies brought in their show and tell on the Sunday! My god, there's some talented people out there. Stumpwork, hardanger, ribbon embroidery, smocking, book binding - were just some of the things these ladies could do. It was very exciting.
When I went to my monthly Tapestry class and reported on my forays into embroidery, I was really pleased to hear that the two ladies who started the Tapestry Studio had also taken lessons at Mosman Needlecraft. They had branched out into hardanger - not something I've tried yet. Notice the yet. Ha. Seriously, I have way too much on at the moment, I'm not anywhere near a 'yet' status with a new type of embroidery.