In addition to our bimonthly meetings, CyberStitchers offers several types of educational opportunities for its membership.
- President’s Challenge: The CyberStitchers president issues an annual challenge to the membership. The theme is announced in January and always is a surprise. It could be anything—maybe a challenge to inspire you to work on your pile of unfinished projects (aka UFOs), to try a new technique, or to stitch more every day.
- Big Education Event (BEE): Each year CyberStitchers sponsors an EGA Group Correspondence Course (GCC). In the spring, members vote on which GCC to offer, and the course begins during the summer. Members can sign up for one BEE course each year for just the cost of the text, kit, and shipping. This is an awesome membership perk—usually you also have to pay an additional amount for the teaching fee.
- Meeting programs: Meetings sometimes offer a program, such as an EGA Petit Project, a show and tell, a stitch-along (SAL), or other small projects.
- Online classes: Opportunities to take classes with well-known embroidery designers. The classes are held over a period of several weeks and include online interaction with the instructor, instructional materials, and photos.
Educational activities
President’s challenge
The 2021 challenge is to complete a mystery sampler of your own design. Each month the president provides a prompt for you use as inspiration for the next element of your sampler. For example, the prompt for January is buildings, so you stitch a building of any type on your sampler (like a house, a barn, a library, a museum, a skyscraper, a castle, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Roman Colosseum, the Taj Mahal—any kind of building that captures your imagination). Your sampler can be any size you like, and be made with your choice of any ground fabric, threads, and techniques that use a threaded needle.
Round robin
Ten of our members are participating in a round robin group stitching experience that started in January 2020. In a round robin, each person in the group stitches an area on each of the other group members’ pieces. To get started, each stitcher decides on a theme for their piece, sections off the fabric into different areas, stitches the first area on the piece, and then mails the piece to the next stitcher. The pieces make their way around the whole group, with each person in turn adding a new area to the piece. By the end of the round robin, the completed piece ends up with its owner.
2021–2022 BEEs
For the Big Education Event (BEE), CyberStitchers sponsor sseveral EGA group correspondence courses.
You must be a member of CyberStitchers to participate in the BEE. Members can register for the BEE in our groups.io chat group. If you have any questions about the BEE classes, email our education chair.
The BEE classes run at various times throughout the year.
Click the images to see a bigger picture of the project.
| Project | GCC Name | Registration Dates (approx.) | Start Dates (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Shimmering Dreams with Mona Hill Ever-larger sparkling squares rotate around a shiny central medallion to finish in a star silhouette. This glorious 10” x 10” composition of metallics, silk threads, and blending filaments explores laying silk, shading, beading and couching techniques, and working layered and composite stitches, (including sprats head and Amadeus hearts). The thorough text contains many diagrams. White congress cloth makes a quiet, sparkling piece; navy congress cloth makes it glowing, and dynamic. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $54 Estimated supplies: $45 silk/$27 cotton floss | Closed | August 2021 |
 | My Favorite Bracelet with Jeanette Carmichael Resplendent with pearl, silver, and crystal beads, My Favorite Bracelet is the time-honored classic bracelet, at home with both casual and formal wear and easily paired with a pearl necklace and earrings. It is made to fit the student’s wrist perfectly and is fastened with a sterling silver clasp. The student will learn about beads and bead finishes, the reinforced square stitch foundation upon which the embellishment beads are attached, and a technique for a looped raised platform atop the foundation providing a dimension of height to the bracelet. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $40 Estimated supplies: $80 | Closed | August 2021 |
 | Finishing with Flair with Marion Scoular Finishing with Flair with Marion Scoular is a notebook Group Correspondence Course covering three useful techniques for finishing needlework and instructions for lacing needlework for framing. The three techniques are how to mitre a corner and do simple hemstitching; how to stitch a picot edge; and how to stitch a corded edging. Do the finishing yourself, save money, and know that the work is done well. Little expense is involved as students may use scraps from their collection. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $36 Estimated supplies: minimal | Closed | August 2021 |
 | Jacobean Fantasy with Kay Stanis With elegant poetry and a glimmer from down the glittering corridors of an age long past comes a glimpse of life about which we can but dream. Giving new interpretation to designs of the seventeenth century and blending them with the silk and metal of the twenty-first, we will create an exquisite floral design on silk fabric with detached sheer fabric. Techniques include working Battlement couching, Burden stitch, chipping and “S”ing. Soft twist silks in solid and overdyes will be combined with braids, crimped purl, check purl, and pearl purl. For dimensional effects we will work the detached elements separately on sheer fabric in the creation of this exquisite embroidery. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $20 Estimated supplies: $80 | Closed | December 2021 |
 | Beginner’s Hardanger with Marion Scoular learn the basic techniques of Hardanger with the option of stitching in a solid color or experimenting with Watercolours®. Elegant and lace-like, Hardanger embroidery is easier to stitch than it appears. Worked in the hand, it is great to take on travels. Hardanger’s basic techniques are clearly explained. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $35 Estimated supplies: $13 | Closed | December 2021 |
 | Reticello Needle Book with Jonalene Gutwein This course is the next step for the experienced drawn thread enthusiast who wishes to begin learning the technique of reticello. It incorporates the pulled 4-sided stitch, the cutting of threads in both directions, satin stitched edges, and needle weaving. This GCC starts you in the direction of needle lace. Additional stitches used in this GCC are blanket stitched arcs with or without circle picots, creating blanket stitched initials, and many variations of arcs, bars, and combinations of these stitches. This personalized GCC allows students to choose one initial. The GCC instructions will include your personalized template, the page of working instructions for the initial, as well as 18 pages of an in-depth appendix of instructions and figures for creating these embellishments. The embellishments may be interchanged in many areas, making your needle book unique. The 40 pages before the Appendix have step-by-step instructions to work the needle book for your embellishments. The finishing of the needle book is a “picot” edge, again with step- by-step instruction and figures. There also is a template with your figure for stretching it back into shape. Prerequisite for this GCC is a working knowledge of either Hardanger or drawn thread. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $35 Estimated supplies: $15 | Closed | December 2021 |
 | Ancestree with Carolyn Standing Webb you will work on a tree of life design that will feature you and your family. You can add your mother, grandmother, great grandmother and back for 5 generations or you can make one with just your immediate family. This design can become a heirloom passed on to future generations in your family. The tree is stitched on either 28 or 32 count antique white linen with black threads. The threads can be either cotton or silk. Three sizes of black thread is used to shade the design. Gold thread is added for a special sparkle. Shading is achieved by using both pattern and size of thread. You will be able to explore how to create the paths for double running and why some blackwork patterns are not reversible. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $40 Estimated supplies: $30 silk/$17 cotton floss | January 2022 | March 2022 |
 | Mark and Paint on Canvas and Fabric with Laura Smith Learn to transfer designs to fabric or canvas. Do you have a drawing or photo that you’d like to make into an embroidered design? In this class, you will mark and paint one design onto needlepoint canvas and one onto silk fabric. Step-by-step instructions are given for painting with acrylic paint and fabric paint or dye (including using resist). The importance of using markers and paint that conform to archival quality standards for fabrics is emphasized. An appendix gives details about specific products and sources. Students may use the three provided designs, but are encouraged to create their own. The annotated bibliography includes design and drawing books, but this class will not teach drawing per se. The goal of this course is for students to feel confident and competent to transfer designs to fabric or canvas with markers and paint. After you complete the course, the text becomes a reference manual that you’ll use over and over again. Students are encouraged to work in groups to share supplies, but the course may be taken by individuals. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $32 Estimated supplies: $30 | January 2022 | March 2022 |
 | Desert Strands with Becky Autry Work on 18 different stitches with blocks of Russian drawn thread! Russian drawn thread is similar to other filet techniques found in needlework from various European countries. There are basically four components of the design; corner triangles, diamond points, center and borders. The piece can either be framed and/or hemstitched. Desert Strands can be stitched using the colors selected by the teacher to reflect the stitcher’s vison of desert colors. Students are encouraged to select their own color palette by first selecting an overdyed fiber of their choice and then selecting coordinating colors in cotton floss. Students are also encouraged to create their own design for the Russian drawn thread grid. This is a good project for the advanced beginner to intermediate stitcher. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $35 Estimated supplies: $40 | January 2022 | March 2022 |
 | The Princess and the Pea with Marion Scoular Stitch a beautiful interpretation of the beloved fairy tale! Blackwork is the most creative, restricted embroidery that you can stitch… restricted only by the count of your fabric. There are endless patterns from which to choose. Teacher Marion Scoular’s interpretation of the beloved fairy tale includes pattern darning, Blackwork, Hardanger (no cutting!) and a small amount of surface stitchery, all explicitly covered in a 26-page, well-illustrated booklet. To ensure accuracy, the teacher will be supplying the imprinted fabric, with no creases, in a roll. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $55 Estimated supplies: $32 | April 2022 | June 2022 |
 | Papillon with Adrienne G. Meyer Explore the world of filet embroidery! Papillon is an introductory course about filet embroidery. In this 5-lesson course participants will learn briefly about the history of filet work. With needle and thread in hand, students will surround a square with satin and four-sided stitches on 30-count linen. They will then create a new grid by cutting and withdrawing threads and overcasting the remaining threads. Participants will learn the point de reprise or darning stitch to create a butterfly (papillon). They will also learn tips and techniques for cross-stitching a favorite verse over one thread – one of the teacher’s favorite verses or a verse of their own. Students will also learn to finish the edge of the linen with hemstitch or Nun stitch. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $35 Estimated supplies: $35 silk/$24 cotton floss | April 2022 | June 2022 |
 | Fandango with Barbara Kershaw Learn the beautiful style of Italian Whitework Embroidery, Punto Antico Punto Antico, one of many beautiful styles of Italian whitework embroidery. Punto Antico embroidery includes a lot of satin stitch, Palestrina and bullion knots, curls and scrolls. Italian hemstitch is also an integral part of any deign as well as drawn thread areas with sometime simple and may times intricate needlewoven insertions. No matter if simple or intricate it is a beautiful form of whitework. The design was created as a pillow band but instruction for an alternate end to create the runner are included in the text. Teaching fee: $25 Book: $45 Estimated supplies: $50 ($40 finishing supplies) | April 2022 | June 2022 |