Needle felting is a wonderful craft, it’s easy to do and very relaxing, it’s also a very affordable craft with the wool and tools not costing a great deal. However, it’s highly addictive. Felting is the process of condensing wool and making it dense so that it forms together and makes a fabric, or in […]
Do you believe in superstitions? In the days when water was drawn from a well and carried back to the house in buckets on shoulder poles, there was a superstition about it in Belarus. If one came across a girl or woman with I like to stitch a good omen in all my cross-stitch projects […]
Simon the Musician is one of the first designs I created when I moved to Canada. I wanted to create a Belarusan archetypal image. Simon the Musician is a popular character from the poem of the same name written by Yakub Kolas. Simon is a young village boy shunned by all for his love of […]
The inspiration for the design of this little project was a window grate in a photo of an old door in Morocco. When I saw the photo so many ideas for ways to create with the design began popping into my head. Now, the window grate was distorted by the angle of the picture, so […]
This piece was a happy combination of the theme for this issue and an art project our youngest did while in University! Katie created this large castle wall full of windows, and when you opened each window, you could see the room inside. I kept the project pieces long after she graduated, as I always […]
A little history… The Mir Castle. In medieval times, Belarus (the former Grand Principality of Litva) was considered a ‘country of palaces and castles’. Unfortunately, there are very few ‘old’ things left after the numerous wars and 200 years under Russian occupation. Still, Mir Castle is undoubtedly known to everyone who has heard about Belarus […]
The dress was worn by my maternal grandmother on her wedding day. Florence Emily (Flossie) Vint (daughter of Joseph and Charlotte (Campbell) Vint married George Middleton Donaldson (son of Isaac and Margaret (Shewan Donaldson) on December 26th, 1911 in Nesbitt, Manitoba and had 4 children: Hubert, Greta, Bremner and Fae. Read more in our Issue […]
Last year I read about a new challenge from the San Francisco School of Needlework and Design. Entitled Healing and Reflection, the challenge was to produce a stitching exploring the concepts of healing and one’s experience with embroidery. I was enticed to participate, as I have found much benefit in my own health journey, once […]
Welcome to a new installment of “In the Studio …” This time, I’d like to share with you a technique I use often in my work: image transfer. I have tried different techniques to transfer images onto fabric, but by far, the easiest and most successful is with the use of Transfer Artist Paper or […]
There comes a time in most children’s lives when they’ll no longer want to wear smocking. But do not despair if you’re a mom or grandmother who loves to smock and still want to do so for your little ones. There are other things you can create which they don’t have to wear – like […]