Excellence, indeed.

I recently completed the biggest needlepoint project of my life (which I will someday show you all). And now that there’s no more stitching to do, I’m finding myself missing the soothing rhythm of the work, and watching the design grow on the canvas.

So I had fun today looking at PieceWork Magazine’s Excellence in Needle Arts award winners. Some truly beautiful things here, including:

Grand Prize winner Suzanne Vinmans created the piece above, called “Gnossienes” (after Erik Satie’s piano compositions). I love how she uses traditional flower motifs, but in a delightfully random sort of way. The lightness of this design is great fun, as if it could all float right off the fabric any minute.

The first-place winner for Quilting, Karen Kieppe, made this “Crazy Quilt Wallhanging.” It’s dripping with embellishments: silk ribbon embroidery, beading, lace trims, tatting, crochet . . . . I imagine that up close, you could stare at it for hours, trying to take in all the details. I love that wavy border, too.

. . . And then there’s this: the first-place winner for Counted Thread is Janet Owen. She stitched this piece, “Mermaids of the Deep Blue.” Good lord! How do you manage the placement of all those colors? The background kills me – it looks random, but then nothing is random in cross-stitch, right?

There are more winners — you can see their work, as well as detail shots of these pieces, here, or in the March/April issue of PieceWork.

That big project of mine? Yeah, it bears very little resemblance to this stuff.