Les Rubans Anciennes

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What with all the holiday hubbub, I never got around to posting about the second class I took in November (after Chocolat). I didn't have to even travel for this one, as it was at a local shop. Now, this is a shop I don't go to very much (well, since being a one-car family, I don't go to any shops very much), for a few reasons:

1. It's mainly a needlepoint shop.
2. Canvases can run over $400!
3. It's frequented by extremely chichi women, of which I am not one.
4. CANVASES CAN RUN OVER $400!!!1!!one!!!

Ahem.

Anyway, I usually only set foot in this store when I'm shielded by the bright and shining combined buying power of Jean and Teresa...no one notices my purchases are pitiful because they're too blinded by the glare of their melting credit cards. (I jest...but seriously.) On one of those occasions, they were tantalized by a sign proclaiming that Tony Minieri would be teaching. Now even *I*, with my limited needlepoint knowledge, have heard of Tony Minieri, and I even have some of his ornament kits in my stash. They put themselves on the list on the spot, and I succumbed to the peer pressure and I didn't even ask how much the class was. Because, see above about chichi. One doesn't ask such questions, donchaknow.

After I left and stopped hyperventilating at my extreme carelessness, I started to get really excited. I did my prework, but all the time I was thinking, "What the HECK are we going to DO for FOUR DAYS??"

BWAHAHAHAHA!! (That's the sound of "day two Heather" listening to "prework Heather" asking that question.)

I mean, I've been in some pretty complex needlework classes, and none of them have been more than like, A DAY. THIS, however, was an entirely different ball of wax. Ew. Ball of yarn. That's better. The pace was very fast, especially for a night owl like me who was being forced to parse a lot of verbal instructions at 9am! There was even HOMEWORK! I would say that if you have trouble processing verbal instructions, you're probably going to have a tough time in one of Tony's classes. His written instructions are great, and you'll be able to get everything later, but you'll be a little adrift during class. It was kinda like being in a fiber boot camp run by Harvey Feinstein. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

ANY-hoo! What you really want are PICTURES! Well, here they are...somehow my camnesia during class extended to not getting a good picture of the model, which was GORGEOUS. BEYOND GORGEOUS. But I wasn't sure it was Allowed, so I didn't. We did get a super-nice full-size color copy of the model for reference later. Priceless.

Here's what I had at the end of the four days:

 

By the way, these are NOT the original ("antique") colors if you happen to find an image online. These are "jewel tones". Shhhh...don't tell Tony, but I'm going to change a couple shades. I actually think I would have liked the antique colors better, but there was ORANGE, so I couldn't do it. Many thanks to Jean for the Oli clips...I literally would have died without them, since I had about 8 needles threaded at any one time!!

Here are some closeups: (old camera, but it did pretty well =)

 

The tie-down stitch for all that gold was put in first, but left open and hanging until all the gold was in, then it was stitched down. Brilliant!

 

This crazy modified crescent stitch is the bomb!

 

Oh, day one, how naive I was then....

 

Can you see how dimensional this piece is going to be?

 

More crescents and such!

 

This tie-down was actually relaxing to do...probably why I finished it. The scrolls...notsomuch. But gorgeous!

 

Another tie-down...hmmm...also relaxing! My laying is getting better, but when I would walk up and look at the model, I would realize that it still looks like the surface of the moon in comparison!!

JiffNotes
Just scroll back up and look at the pretty pictures; there are way too many words at the beginning of this post. I stitched that stuff!