To promote the love of Smocking and Heirloom Sewing from the members of the Sandcastle Chapter of SAGA

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Fun Weekend with Susie Gay!



At the end of June, our chapter held a wonderful weekend of stitching with Susie Gay. On Friday, June 27, the Pacific Waves chapter hosted her for Simple Stitches, a lovely linen dress with ladder hemstitching, lace and some simple embroidery, with Susie's favorite stitch, granitos.  We held our class at the Orange Coast Memorial Hospital in Fountain Valley, where we hold the Sandcastle monthly meetings.


Isn't the embroidery lovely? The dress is made with Spechler-Vogel linen and embroidered with DMC floss. For the hemstitching, we withdrew four threads to form each channel, and hem stitched bundles of six threads together. This dress was featured in Sew Beautiful magazine, Issue 146, Jan-Feb 2013. Sadly, Sew Beautiful is no longer being published. Sniff.


Here we are having fun withdrawing threads. On Friday night, many of us gathered for dinner at Solita, a new Mexican restaurant in Huntington Beach. Thanks to my brothers who recommended it! It's good to have foodies in the family.


On Saturday and Sunday of the same weekend, the Sandcastle Chapter hosted Susie for The Purse Reticule. This is much more ambitious project! Before the class, we got to select the color of the silk dupioni, which came with coordinating ribbons and our choice of monogram.





Some closeups of the embroidery. Exquisite, isn't it? Most of us finished the pincushion, and several ladies even finished the emery (top photo to the left of the pincushion).

It was a great two days of handling lovely fabrics and ribbons, and I can't wait to get mine finished. On Saturday evening, we all went to my house for a pot luck barbecue. What a great time we had, especially as the little boy who lives in back of us was having his 5th birthday party, and we could hear all the little voices squealing with delight in the jumping thing that kids like.


Here Susie is pointing out some of the finer points of construction to two of our members. I'm off to the side. One of the advantages of being an author is that I can crop myself out.

Stay tuned for updates! I plan on posting photos as members work on and finish the projects. Wait until you see all the lovely fabrics used as lining in the different Purse Reticule kit.

Posted by Cynthia

3 comments:

  1. Cynthia, thank you for posting the pictures and for overseeing this! Becky

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  2. I love Susie Gay's Simple Stitches dress; i made it last year with a vintage 1960's baby girl's dress pattern; i omitted the lace as I thought it was too fussy and took away the focus from the divine hem stitching and embroidery. Lucky you having her for a weekend of stitching :D

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