I don’t know how I missed posting A Dusting of Snow once I got it framed (June 2020) from a class I took with Gail Stafford through my ANG Keystone Garden chapter in June of 2019. It seems appropriate to post it now as the last snow (I hope) melts away.
Gail created the piece based on this photo. I’d say she nailed it!
Appropriately enough, the dusting of snow was the last of the threads to go on the piece.
The narrow area of the sky around the leaves and between trees 1 and 2 for example was quite challenging to compensate. But, the small diagram of the partial Nobuko stitch really helped orient me in those small areas.
Many thanks to Gail Stafford for coming to PA and to the Keystone Garden chapter for bringing her to teach. It was a great class and fun piece to stitch.
The leaves are done on A Dusting of Snow from class with Gail Stafford. I couldn’t put it down until I stitched most of the brown leaves at my ANG Main Line Stitchers chapter Stitch-in yesterday and finished them off today.
Now for the challenging sky!
The Dusting of Snow piece from class with Gail Stafford is coming along nicely.
I added snow to the first of the center bushes, have the Dogwood tree in place, filled in the upper right sky in both colors, stitched all 9 distant trees, and the gazebo. I was worried about disrupting the smoothness of the roof with the branches of the Dogwood. So, I wrapped the thread around the padding threads and tacked down sparingly and closer to the single brown thread. I like the rounded effect. It would not have worked out to do that for the whole tree because I couldn’t maintain the tension without twisting. Maybe if I had wrapped a thick wire. I’m very happy the Dogwood tree is done. That was challenging.
Taking a break before working more of the center bushes, the leaves on the trees, and the rest.
My other ANG chapter, Keystone Garden, celebrated their 25th anniversary as a chapter by bringing in Gail Stafford to teach A Dusting of Snow this weekend. We just payed for the kit and the chapter paid the teacher’s expenses. Nice! And, thanks to Jeanne H who did a great job organizing the event. We had almost two dozen in class with members from ANG’s New Jersey Needle Artists and Main Line Stitchers chapters joining in on the fun. It’s always great to see our NJ neighbors.
This is a lovely, award-winning piece of Gail’s from a couple of years ago. It’s a comfortable size (design area 7″ x 5″) and Gail gives us a line drawing with a partial painting of the design on Congress Cloth.
Gail has another view of the same gazebo, Arrival of Spring, that she’ll be teaching at ANG Seminar in Houston in August (registration is still possible). This is a gazebo near her home. With her permission, I am posting the photo of the actual gazebo, what her stitched gazebo looks like, and my progress after our 2-day class.
The instructions are great and Gail was fantastic. Checking on us and catching 2 of my mistakes before I got too far along. It makes sense that she’s great teacher because she is also a college level math teacher. Gail shared her process of designing, knitting, and teaching which I found particularly interesting. This is going to be fun seeing the scene develop.
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