The NANI Board meeting planned for today Saturday, Feb 23rd, has been cancelled. Hope to see everyone at the General meeting on Tuesday, March 5th, at 7 p.m. at the Social Center of Community Park, our regular meeting location. Remember to bring fabric and threads from your stash for a Name Tag and Bookmark Workshop. Charts will be provided, and some supplies from the NANI stash will be available. Cost is $2 which you can bring that night to cover photocopy expenses. See you then!

Bookmarks

The EGA's Literacy Bookmark program is still ongoing. I've been neglecting it and need to get back to work and hopefully motivate you to make some bookmarks, too. We're still supporting Hammond Reads.This morning Needle 'n Thread featured a lovely bookmark pattern that is plenty inspirational to me. Go to Mary's blog to download a line drawing of this lovely Hungarian bookmark and to see some other lovely bookmark designs. Hopefully I'll see you at next month's meeting with some completed bookmarks. Marjorie

Time to vote

During the November Chapter Meeting, we will be voting
for NANI officers:

President: Karol J
Vice President: Beth V
Treasurer: Cathy W
Secretary: Pat B

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Following the business meeting, and refreshments,
we will have open stitching time.

You may want to consider
stitching on an outreach program:
a kissing pillow,
Hospice square,
ornament for Hospice, or
bookmark.

This time could be used
on a personal stitching project or
on class projects started during the year,
or get help if you are stuck on something!

Should anyone have extra supplies
in their stash,
to donate towards the Kissing Pillow Project,
please bring them along
to the November meeting.

All donations would be appreciated.
If not, members who are stitching Kissing Pillow patterns
will need to bring their own supplies.

Supplies needed are:
6" x 6" OR 5" x 5" squares of 14 ct white aida
Blue Floss (DMC 797)
Red Floss (DMC 321)
White Floss (DMC Blanc)

Thx

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additional announcements/reminders:

Per Marjorie: Jane will be happy to help people with the crewel and she'll be bringing extra threads.

Renee S will be collecting completed forms for the Secret Stitcher Program. Forms are due no later than December 15th; however, she would like to have them asap.

Cindy L will be collecting completed forms for the Scholarship Program. Forms are due by November 20th.

Sue H will be collecting money for the holiday party. The deadline for reservations is November 29th.

Additional details were sent
via e-mail and/or can be found in the
November/December newsletter

Need a form? e-mail Needle Artisans

Change in Education Schedule

--------------------EDITED POST--------------------

This class, scheduled for the November Chapter meeting
has been cancelled
Christmas Rose Ornament

Following the regular November business meeting,
we encourage members to
stitch

Kissing Pillow *
patterns,

squares of needlework for
the Hospice cards,

bring in one of the
monthly class pieces,

or any of your
needlework projects!

*EDITED:
Should anyone have extra supplies
in their stash,
to donate towards the Kissing Pillow Project,
please bring them along
to the November meeting.

All donations would be appreciated.
If not, members who are stitching Kissing Pillow patterns
will need to bring their own supplies.

Supplies needed are:
6" x 6" OR 5" x 5" squares of 14 ct white aida
Blue Floss (DMC 797)
Red Floss (DMC 321)
White Floss (DMC Blanc)

Thx

Thank you, Thank you!

Many, many thanks to all of our members who stitched bookmarks for the Hammond Reads program. We donated 66 bookmarks to the program. I am so excited! This will make this year's program even better for the participants.

The bookmarks pictured here are from the September meeting.These lovely lighthouses were all done by Pam S-Y.These were by Carol P., Cheryl L. and Janet C.I played with sequin waste and made a bunch of these. We are all invited to attend their festival.

EGA Literacy Program

This is the event we've been making the bookmarks for. Please being any bookmarks you're working on to the September meeting and I'll make sure they get to Hammond Reads before the event.

More EGA Outreach Bookmarks

Thank you very much, ladies.

Just look at these gorgeous bookmarks!By Margaret Shaw, a new member.By Janet C (cross stitch) and Marjorie HolmeMore by Margaret Shaw--is she a whiz or what?

For Hammond Reads

Literacy Program Bookmarks

At the June meeting, these bookmarks were collected to give to Hammond Reads for their October extravaganza. They were stitched by Chris Retseck (the two on perforated paper in the middle), Pat Bellenger (the Hardanger bookmark), and Marjorie Holme. They have been given to Hammond Reads along with a box of donated books.


Please continue to stitch on your bookmarks and collect your gently used books for the project.

NANI Outreach

We have a variety of outreach projects ongoing or coming up. So many it's hard to keep track of them all. Here's an overview:

Stitching:
Hospice of the Calumet Area: We need 2" square stitched designs for their cards* and hand-stitched holiday ornaments, any design or style.*

Hammond Reads: Bookmarks, primarily aimed at children. Standard bookmark sizes are between 2" and 3" wide and 6" and 8" long but other sizes and styles are welcome.* Any designs or materials that you wish. Some designs and more information are available at Stitching for Literacy. This is an EGA outreach project. [We are also collecting new and lightly-used books of all types, for all ages, for Hammond Reads to distribute.]

*Marjorie Holme will have precut pieces of Hardanger fabric, donated to the outreach projects by Karen Uebler, for the Hospice cards, ornaments and Hammond Reads bookmarks at the June meeting. These are all nicely portable projects ideal for summer stitching.

Threads That Bind: We are collecting hand-stitched ornaments for our show boutique. The deadline is the September meeting. All profits go to the chapter. (more details in an upcoming post)

Your finished embroideries! Please don't forget to submit one or more (or many) pieces for display in the show.

Members' Boutique: more details on this opportunity to support the guild and also make a little money for yourself will be in an upcoming post.

Volunteering:
There will be a number of volunteer opportunities for our show. We hope everyone will participate before and during the show. Watch this blog for more details on volunteer sign up for the show.

Camp Quality Illinois: We will be teaching at the Camp on Friday August 6. We will need volunteers one night to help kit the project (date to be determined) and as many volunteers as possible to come and stitch with the kids on the morning of August 6. Camp Quality Illinois is in Frankfort, IL.

Beginning Stitching at the YMCA: We plan to expand our experimental program at the YMCA and make it more organized and formal. It was slow at first but we ended up with nicely sized classes of children and adults. We plan to teach this fall on Thursdays at 6:30pm from September to Thanksgiving. September's project will be a beginning cross stitch sampler, designed by Jamee Jecmen. October will be "tattoo your jeans": how to decorate your clothing with embroidery, something popular with teens right now. November will be simple holiday ornaments. We would like volunteers to commit to coming for one month to work with the beginning students.

Bookmark Thank You!

Thank you to all of our members who participated in the EGA Outreach Bookmark Project to date. The 14 bookmarks below were donated to Hammond Reads for their literacy programs. Program representative Nancy Machnikowski accepted them on behalf of the group and outlined some of their many projects.The bookmarks above are by Diana Schafer. Those below are from Pam Schopp-Young, Renee Stern, Violet Strimbu and Marjorie Holme.This is an ongoing project so anyone who took Hardanger fabric for bookmarks at the April meeting will have time to complete their bookmarks before Hammond Reads' big event October 1st. We will accept all bookmarks, any time. We'd like to keep this going. Marjorie Holme will also be collecting books for Hammond Reads: adult and children, fiction and nonfiction new or lightly used books are welcome.

EGA Bookmark Challenge

At last night’s meeting I presented a program from EGA Outreach 2010: the Stitching for Literacy bookmark Challenge. The EGA's program outline is on the right on this page. The challenge is aimed at creating bookmarks for a local school or library for Children’s Book Week in early May. I am hoping to hear back soon from the Munster Public Library about our partnering with them for this.

Time is tight. Please bring completed bookmarks to the May meeting. I plan to bring my camera to photograph the bookmarks to be entered for the prizes. Please spread the word.

As an ongoing outreach, I will continue collecting bookmarks for the local program Hammond Reads. They are a local literacy program and one of their activities is to collect and give books to children. Their main event is in the fall, a program called Time Out for Reading. We hope to have a good amount of bookmarks to give to them for this event. (and if you have any books you wish to donate, they would be welcome, too!)

I learned about this program late in the day yesterday and was only half-prepared for the meeting. Here are some bookmark guidelines and suggestions.


Traditional rectangular bookmarks can be almost any size—as long as it fits in a book. Embroidery designs should be fairly flat—no stumpwork or dimensional stitches unless they are on the part that sticks out of the book. A “standard” size I found online is 2-1/4” x 7-1/2”. The bookmark my library hands out are 2” x 6”

You may stitch the entire length of a bookmark or just stitch a small area and attach it to a backing. Bookmarks may be backed with self-fabric, ribbon, felt, or cardboard.

Wee Folk Art provides patterns for a cute felt mouse bookmark and a Koala bookmark—the tails are the actual book marks. I'm sure this idea can be adapted for other motifs.

If you scroll down a bit on the Bookmark Collector’s page there are links to several bookmark patterns.

There are also corner bookmarks. Here’s a tutorial for a cross stitch corner book mark on Feeling Stitchy.

At the meeting, someone asked about plastic sleeves for bookmarks. I found them online. The site also offers reasonably priced kits for paper bookmarks with sleeves. If we want to do this as an ongoing project, we could perhaps stitch sample designs to fit the bookmark size, scan them, and print bookmarks of our designs (with our chapter info printed on the back).