Winning Biscournu

This year we have two Presidents Challenges & the first was a biscouru which I completed from a kit my Mum let me have from her collection. She also taught me how to do the long armed cross to nicely join the two pieces & ensured that it was stuffed appropriately - thanks Mum!

With the presidents challenge guild members are encouraged to complete an item & then we all bring them to a meeting and vote on which one we like the best. voting is anonymous & entries are generally anonymous also - so no popularity contest really, although fairly casual.
Anyway, judging is in & here is the winning entry:

Mine :) and the prize: a voucher for Nancy's Embroidery shop yah!!!!

Now if you wish to see this in Real life as well as the other entries - please head along to the Embroidery Conference from the 7th of July in Christchurch at St Bedes. You can check out all the amazing work the guilds around NZ do. I am really looking forward to this.

My Mums test piece

Recently I have been working on a piece which my mother is teaching next year at the Wanaka Embroidery School, so if you like it you can have a go there :)
As she has only taught to her local guild members I offered to test her written instructions - at the moment I am good at this task as I am still learning a lot, yet am pretty good (if I do say so myself) at reading & learning stitches. I have also timed each step so she can ensure enough is taught.

This is inspired from a pattern she purchased in Canada & has adapted:

 

 

it has been a bit tricky choosing the right threads for each piece, but all part of the learning curve & ensuring I had enough thread for the parts I choose. There were a couple of times where I found the incorrect way to do one stitch several times.