If you love needlework and you love to travel, I found a website that might be of interest to you. I came upon an article about it in the latest Inspiration Magazine. Funny how these situations unfold:
Inspirations Magazine is my biggest needlework “indulgence.” It’s a wonderful magazine full of great ideas for embroidery and loaded with embroidery patterns and articles and whatnot. It is pricey, I must admit. But I budget it carefully into my hobby money every month, so that I can renew my subscription without the pocket pain!
When the magazine arrives, I spend my lunch hour perusing all the content, and I never miss the “smaller” articles because that’s where the human interest part of the textile world is found.
With summer coming, anything that smacks of “travel” catches my attention, and sure enough, there was an article on travel. Not just ANY travel, but Needlework Travel!!
Marie Yolande organizes needlework tours! I quickly took the opportunity to visit her website and found out that this year’s tour looks absolutely enchanting – hence, “Enchanting Ireland.”
If you love needlework and you love travel, I don’t see how you could miss with this type of tour. It just looks like sheer indulgence! And with the Mountmellick embroidery workshop to boot, you’d go home richer in outlook and skill.
I communicated with Yolande to get permission to write about her work here, and asked her about upcoming tours. Personally, I can’t afford to head out on vacation without budgeting carefully for a year and planning my summer vacation time around my summer embroidery classes and my job. So I like to plan these things well in advance. Well, what could possibly be better than heading to Italy for a lace and needlework show in mid-May, 2009? Yolande plans on offering an Italian tour in 2009, and, God willing, I’ll be along. I’m already planning it into my budget for the next two years! I realize a lot can happen between now and then, but I’m so excited about the prospect.
Yolande kindly sent along some photos from a previous Italian lace and needlework show, so I thought I’d share a few so you can see a small portion of the experience!
Here’s a gorgeous sample of Italian thread painting. The red rose is superb.
This is a display of exquisite needlelace and embroidered goods. The long oval table runner on the top of the right wall is very similar to my whitework runner, although quite a bit wider and without the filet lace inserts that I put in mine. But it’s the same idea – cutwork and white-on-white embroidery, with a needlelace edge. I’d love to see this one up close, and the rectangular one with the wide needlelace edge! WOW!
Another marvelous display of textiles – filet lace is the focus here. I wonder if these are bed covers? I seriously doubt they are table cloths. I love the shape of the inset medallion. Very nice!
This is Yolande with Seg. Antonietta, who embroiders for the Vatican. On the wall in the background, you can see a photo of her with the Pope.
The above work, Rosa Mistica, was displayed at one of the booths in the Italian needlework show. This needlepainting is very nice – note the shadows on the face and the “sketched” look of the piece.
If you have a chance and want to see photos of Yolande’s tours, don’t miss checking out her website. Don’t miss her unforgettable photos of previous needlework tours. On her website, you’ll also find a virtual tour of this year’s Enchanting Ireland adventure.
If you can’t join up, sit back with a cup of coffee and enjoy the photos…. and dream!
I saw the article bout Boutis
Do you have any design patterns for Boutis Provençale that are suitable for clothing.
I was very impressed with your work which I saw in Threads in the March 2003 issue.
Hi, Helen – if you check the patterns page, you might find some designs that could work for Boutis, but I don’t have any that are specifically for that purpose. I’ve seen plenty of quilts in that style, but not a lot of clothing….
I think you might be looking for a different writer – I have written for Threads Magazine, but my first article for them just came out this past year. I’ve never done any Boutis quilting – though I’d love to. I think it’s gorgeous!