 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Every month my mother, two of my three sisters, and I get together for a family Stitch 'n Bitch. Sometimes my daughter joins us, sometimes the hosting sister's much younger daughter will actually sit and do some sort of craft or stitching rather than hiding in her room with videos or being out with us being a nuisance. Fall 2005 one of the ladies in the EGA Cyberstitchers made dragonboats at a class she took and brought them back to share with our group and we started a special interest group on Yahoo for those of us interested in making them. I showed the site to the ladies as a possibility for our December session. They thought it would be a great idea so I printed out the materials list for everyone so that we could get the materials together before we met the next weekend. Unfortunately some of the instructions that we used have a copyright on them, so I cannot post them here or give them out. I do have permission to post THIS LINK from Anna Marie Winter to her page about them. She has a little button which will open a six page .pdf file with full, clear instructions to make the little darlings.
We had a blast making them, even the 8 year old got in on it (my daughter came, but worked on the Temari balls she was giving friends for Christmas). Mom was a bit frustrated with the first one, but caught on and was going full steam ahead on her second one by the time we left. One of my sisters was not happy with having to tape each color of thread when changing them so decided to wind 2-4 colors/strands at a time, giving them a great striped effect and making it go much faster.
When I talked to one sister (she works in a different department at the same community college that I work) she said that they had all been making them all week. They made even more between that week and Christmas and more between then and New Year's eve. It as a catharsis for Mom. We had all, and her especially, had a rough year. We lost Daddy from complications of lung cancer on New Year's Eve 2004, and in October 2005 Mom sold the family home (of 38 years) and moved in with sister number 2.
Last Stitch 'n Bitch (Nov 2006) I mentioned the dragonboats and was told that they had been making even more!
Here are the pictures that we took at Christmas of most of them they had done by that point. I regret to say that I only managed to make the two that I did at the Stitch 'n Bitch and I didn't get pictures of them before my furry babies (of the feline persuasion) found them on the back of my desk. Poor defenseless little dragonboats!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|