EGA Seminar in San Francisco is Just around the Corner

I realized midway through today that I leave for EGA's San Francisco Seminar a week from tomorrow. I am going a day early so that I can go to the Impressionist exhibition from the Musee d'Orsay, in fact several of us are going.

Friday I will have time to look around and get my sealegs and classes for me start on Saturday. I am teaching Saturday/Sunday, then Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday.

I am greatly looking forward to this seminar and am toting MacSoph (my computer), my camera and my video cam to see if I can take and post photos of the seminar on my website during the week I am there.

Am I ready to go? Nooo, but hopefully I will be by next Thursday. Important things like kits for my class are already there, even a couple of extra kits. All I have to do is find my models, both for the things I am teaching at the seminar and my models of Echoes of Elizabeth Sewing Case and my little Townhouse Sewing Case.

I have high hopes that I will see many Echoes and Townhouses in progress and even finished; high hopes because people have been writing to me saying they are bringing their pieces. It is always such fun to see what people do with my designs. I love it when they use my patterns as a starting point and adapt the design to suit themselves. Needlework is such a personal hobby and it should reflect the stitcher, her colors and stitches, and her tastes and her environment.

With this in mind, I am packing so much thread, overdyed thread in particular from Thread Gatherer, Gloriana and Dinky Dyes, colors that would look good on my big Echoes of Elizabeth Sampler. I am also taking all sorts of beads to coordinate with the threads, so I should have a good time trying to convince people to try something a wee bit different. You never know.

And all along the way I plan to have MacSoph and cameras recording the experiences of the in-seminar student as she grapples with the techniques and with design and color choices. Fun times ahead as we approach autumn. I realize that I have been teaching at autumn seminars so often that it seems like a ritual now. I have taught at one or two autumn national seminars for more than 25 years now and this is my final one.

So if you come to the seminar, do come by 'Meet the Teachers' on Sunday afternoon or 'Teachers' Showcase' on Thursday evening to say hello. Not going to the seminar? Then stay tuned and I will see you online. Online, my home from now on.

Gay Ann

Colors for Echoes of Elizabeth

For a long time now I have believed that a needlework class, even one for a 'fixed design' like Echoes of Elizabeth should always have a design and color component as a reminder that a piece of needlework is more than the sum total of a bunch of stitches.

Earlier this month I offered Echoes of Elizabeth Sewing Case on my website in three different color combinations. One color combination, with red accents, is straight from Echoes of Elizabeth Sampler, one a taupe variation, one a green variation. I borrowed the colors from these variations and played with my overdyed threads to make some new combinations.

In the next few days, leading up to seminar, I will post a new color combination for Echoes Sampler each morning on my website. I am hoping my students will take the opportunity to visit my website and check them out. I will then take the silks to class and give people a chance to swap the threads and beads in their 'fixed' kits for one of the variations, or even a combination of the variations and the original.

Even if people end up with my original color combination, I hope they will take the opportunity to consider the others and therefore stretch a bit beyond 'up at one, down at two'.

To follow the color combinations in the next week, visit my website starting tomorrow morning bright and early:
www.GayAnnRogers.com

Gay Ann