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Lifetime Achievement Award

With Thanks to Caela by Donna Halpin

Caela Conn Tyler taught a class named "Royal Oak" to a group of us. Following closely along as she explained the layout of the instructions, I was CERTAIN I was on track. Except for one thing....I thought there was a "rule" that the orange stripe of the canvas selvedge was to be on the left. It wasn't until I had drawn the image, and begun stitching that Caela noted I was going to have my leaves in a different position....since my piece of canvas had been designed to have the selvedge on the right!

That meant I would need to either start over......wrong!!.......or modify the design and work with what I had already done. This was a great class using snippets of organza covered by tulle and then over-stitched on congress cloth—new techniques and results for me. Not being a fan of the color orange, when I got home that day, I quickly went to my thread stash and changed some of the threads and colors....., using silks from JL Walsh, Colour Streams and Gloriana, together with overdyed wool and floss from Needle Necessities and floss from Leah. Then I decided I wanted my leaves to be a little different also......and that meant changing some stitches. I'm hopeful the design still shows the influence and inspiration that I received from Caela in what can only be a different view of the beauty of her piece, "Royal Oak".

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