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WHERE ART MEETS EMBROIDERY PART 2 (LEVEL 3 STUDENT’S WORK)

Earlier this month, Ruth Lane’s blog post covered work done by Gail Harker’s Level 4 students. Check that post out here.

https://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2026/03/21/where-art-meets-embroidery/

My post will cover work done by two of the five Level 3 students, Gloria Shelton and myself.

Here we are at the Opening Reception which was held on February 28th.

Tesi Vaara, Penny Peters, Gail Harker, Gloria Shelton

The exhibition Where Art Meets Embroidery is currently on display at the Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Art Museum (QFA) in LaConner, Washington USA through May 31st.

As Ruth stated in her post, if you live locally, please do try to visit the museum to see our exhibition in person. Photos don’t really do this work justice.

I’ve been on this creative journey with Gail Harker since about 2013. I finished Level 3 Art and Design in 2019. At the completion of that course, we had our exhibition in her studio in LaConner. That was more of a hands-on exhibition for the students as we learned how to display our own work. The museum handled the displays for this exhibition.

We did, however, have the opportunity to rent a space across the street from the museum for two days right after the exhibition opened so that we could share our working notebooks, samples and other artwork that was not at the museum. This was my favorite part as we got to share the story of our work process with people one on one. When you work on a piece for so many hours, it’s nice to see the process from a different person’s perspective. Visitors spent hours going through all of our sketchbooks. Some even bounced back and forth between the two venues several times.

One of my tables had work from Level 3 Art and Design and Level 3 Experimental Stitch.

L3 Art and Design work against the wall and L3 Experimental Stitch on the table

Table display of color schemes and print to stitch sampling

Here is a photo of Gloria’s table items.

Gloria Shelton’s table with work samples of her Paris piece

Now, let’s move over to the actual museum exhibit…

Gloria made a poster-type wall hanging after visiting Paris. Her husband took the photo of the three policemen on skates.

The policemen were printed onto fabric and are heavily stitched.  The rest of the components of this piece are also heavily stitched.

Gloria Shelton with her Paris piece
Gloria with three of her monochromatic color schemes holding her pansy
Gloria’s lovely pansy stitched with silk thread

Gloria LOVES pansies and does a wonderful job of stitching them in a variety of ways.

Here I am with My Secret Garden…

My Secret Garden

Here is a closer view.

My Secret Garden
Closeup of sunflowers, crocosmia and foxglove

Here are the other pieces I had in the exhibition.

Myrtle, Hazel, Andy and Cattails

These were all constructed using a Print-to-Stitch method. I really learned a lot from making the three pieces of the people. These were made from old black and white photos taken in the 1920’s of my grandmother, mother, and grandfather.

Myrtle (My maternal grandmother. AKA Gram)

Myrtle
Myrtle original photo

Hazel (My mom)

Hazel
Hazel original photo

Andy (My maternal grandfather. AKA Dedaddy)

Andy
Andy original photo

I have two more photos that I would like to add to these three. Hopefully someday I will get them completed and framed as well.

 

Hazel on bike
Andy and Myrtle

I am blessed to live on a small lake. These cattails are in front of my property. This time of year, the red winged blackbirds are nesting in this area and it’s fun to see them blowing in the wind while they are hanging onto the reeds.

Cattails
Cattails original photo

The exhibition has been a wonderful way to showcase our current work done over the last 3+ years of study with Gail (and Penny). I hope you get an opportunity to visit the exhibition while it is at the museum. I hope you enjoyed the “tour”!

Happy creating!

Tesi Vaara

 

 

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