Stitch at Home Challenge Deadline: April 15, 2017

What is the “Stitch at Home Challenge”?

We have created the “Stitch at Home Challenge” as a way to encourage and inspire people to stitch. This is not a competition but a challenge. For each challenge we will provide you with an inspiration and you may use any needlework technique or combination of techniques in order to make a piece of textile art. We will offer a new Challenge and Inspiration quarterly.

Who can enter?

Anyone! We know that many of you live far away. If you can’t come and visit us here in San Francisco, this is a great opportunity for you to join our stitching community. If you live close by, you may have the chance to come in and see your work on display at our school during one of our exhibits!

What do I do with my finished piece?

Your finished piece of art belongs to you but for each challenge there will be a deadline for you to submit either a photograph of your piece or the actual piece itself for display in an exhibit. The Challenge Exhibit will be up for a month at SNAD and it is a great opportunity to showcase your work. With your permission, we will also display your work in an online gallery on our website.

San Francisco School of

THIS CHALLENGE’S INSPIRATION:For this challenge, Anna Garris Goiser of Talliaferro Classic Needleart has generously contributed two motifs of her own design for you to interpret into stitch. PDFs of the two motifs can be downloaded from the Challenge page on our website. Below you will find more information about Talliaferro’s designs and philosophy.

TALLIAFERRO is pleased to present you with this original Folio Pattern.

For some years now, we have produced quality crewel embroidery designs, packaged with detailed instructions as to stitches, colors, and materials, for needleartists all over the world.

Our goal has been to provide needleartists, be they beginning stitchers or master embroiderers, with a structure that allows them to inject as much, or as little, of their own creative and imaginative input into a work to make it uniquely their own.

We accomplished this by: 1) providing a beautifully drawn pattern printed on quality paper, which can be enlarged or reduced to suit the intended purpose, or used, as is, to transfer onto the ground fabric, 2) designing the yarn chart and directions so that color substitutions can be easily made and followed, and 3) providing clear comprehensive, well-illustrated stitching instructions.

Almost everyone who embroiders a kit tweaks it a bit to suit themselves and, judging from the many photos our clients have sent us, we have found they have have taken great delight in departing from our original selection of stitches, color schemes, and materials.

It is so exciting to see our designs, which we worked on traditional linen twill with crewel yarn, translated by needleartists into silk on silk embroidery, goldwork, whitework, cotton on cotton, ribbon embroidery, even applique, and in glorious color combinations we never even imagined. Each photo reminds us that the most beautiful heirloom-quality needlework is that in which the needleartist has contributed significantly to the design—choosing the colors, determining the stitches, selecting the ground fabric and fibers.

With that in mind, we have created the TALLIAFERRO Folio Patterns line.

The Folio Patterns are simply patterns--gorgeous, exuberant embroidery patterns with no instructions or photographs to interfere with the your approaching them without preconceived notions as to style of needlework, materials, or color scheme.

We provide the foundation, and then turn the design over to you. When completed, you will have a work like no other—an original that you have created. Enjoy!

Classic Needleart

RIEVAULX: How It Came About

Most fine art needlework, like any other serious art form, is designed and stitched from the heart. Design for design’s sake simply isn’t enough of an impetus for one to commit the amount of time required to create a design and then work it to completion. The stories behind designs are often almost as interesting as the works themselves and have come down through the centuries hand in hand with the needlework.

The Rievaulx series of Folio Designs began with a phone call from an elderly aunt.

Aunt Grace lived in an assisted living community, and before being crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, was a prolific needlepointer and smocker. She rang up to ask me to design a needlepoint piano bench seat that she could work on 10-point canvas (the finest she could force her gnarled and misshapen fingers to stitch) as a gift for her eldest daughter to go along with her beautiful Knabe baby grand which she could no longer play.

When asked about style and color, Aunt Grace said, “Oh, do anything you like, dear. I’m sure I’ll like it!”

This is both the best and worst response a designer can hear as it affords one the complete freedom of getting it abysmally wrong at least fifty percent of the time.

I cast about for an emotional starting point for the design, remembering Aunt Grace’s years as a nurse in England during World War II, and the several different times she’d lived there over the next forty years. She was particularly fond of Yorkshire, both for austere beauty of its landscape and as our family home for centuries before we immigrated to America.

To her memories of Yorkshire, I married the memory of a most perfect day spent there thirty years before, alone in the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey. The remains of the great Cistercian church nestle in serene isolation at the bottom of a shallow bowl in the embrace of the gent North Yorkshire hills. To have been able to spend an entire day in the peace and soaring beauty of Rievaulx was a gift I shall hold dear the rest of my life, so I built the essence of that memory into the design.

I went to work, my mind firmly planted in the 12th century, and the Grande Rievaulx came to life beneath my hands—the colors brilliant and rich, the pattern intricate and flat. I loved it!

Aunt Grace, on the other hand, hated it.

Of course.

She subsequently bought a commercial kit online and everyone was more or less satisfied.

A good design, however, is never wasted. I converted it to a crewel panel, using one-half of the mirror design, and worked three-quarters of it in a monochrome grey palette until I realized the colors simply didn’t work. The greys didn’t capture the vitality of the period that sang to me from the fluted tone columns and towering arches of the ruins. I plucked out all of the stitching and started over with a palette of scarlet, red, and pink, which brought it back to vivid life.

From the rejected piano bench design came four designs of varying sizes, from two single blossoms, Rievaulx Blossom I and II, a smallish pediment, the Rievaulx Medallion, and a panel composed of one-half the Grande Rievaulx called simply, Rievaulx.

I see so many uses for the various designs—I’m so glad Aunt Grace hated it!

Challenge RULES:

1. Please use one or both of the Talliaferro motifs in your design. You can shrink them, enlarge them, use them in a repeating pattern, a random pattern, whatever you like as long as they are present in your design.

2. You may use any needlework technique that you like. Examples include; embroidery, appliqué, quilting, or goldwork. You may also incorporate techniques such as fabric painting, drawing on fabric, or dying fabric; but your design must still include needlework of some kind.

3. Size: Your piece may be any size you choose; however, if it is extremely large we may not be able to hang your piece in our exhibit due to size restraints.

4. Your piece needs no special finishing or framing. 5. Please refer to the sections below on deadlines and mailing submissions for these

important details. You can either mail us your submission or send us a photo submission. 6. Have fun!

ENTRY FORM:All entrants MUST fill out our online entry form. This form should only be completed AFTER your piece is finished and ready to be sent in to SNAD. This link can be found on the Challenge page of our website, www.sfsnad.org.

DEADLINE:ALL SUBMISSIONS MUST BE RECEIVED BY APRIL 15, 2017.

MAILING YOUR SUBMISSION:If you plan on mailing your submission:

1. Fill out our Online Entry Form.2. Mail your piece to the address listed below. Please include return postage and

packaging for returning your piece after the exhibit (please avoid packaging your work with packing peanuts, they are very messy!). Also be sure to include your full

name with your submission so we can match your piece to your online entry form. Your piece must arrive by APRIL 15, 2017.

Mail your submissions to:SFSNAD360 Post St #604San Francisco, CA 94108

PHOTO SUBMISSIONS (If you cannot physically mail your submission): If you plan on submitting a photo submission:

1. Fill out our Online Entry Form.2. Please email us photos of your submission by APRIL 15, 2017. Email the photos to beth@sfsnad.org with “Stitch at Home Challenge” in the subject line. Be sure to include your full name in the email so we can match your submission to your online entry form.

If you send us a photo submission, we will display a print-out of your photo at our exhibit. With your permission, we may also display your work in an online gallery on our website as well as on social media.