Stock certificate frame

Byline: Gary Snyder

This year's Greeting Card Contest elicited some of the most exceptional entries to date. Most significant among the victors is that all are principally artists pursuing their own talented careers. One had won previously (in a different category), while the others are newcomers to the annual competition.

Winners in the General, Valentine's Day, Winter Holiday and Birthday categories each received $200 and a gift certificate from Stitches Magazine. The Grand Prize winner, chosen from these four, won an additional $500 prize from Compucon S.A., Thessaloniki, Greece. The contest's only criteria is that the cards are original designs and comply with U.S. Postal or commercial-courier service guidelines for mailing.

As noted, the spirited contest attracted a number of high-quality entries, making the evaluations particularly difficult for veteran judges Jerry Hunt, owner of A Creative Place in Castle Rock, Colo., and digitizer Donna Lehmann, owner of NeedleUp in Thornton, Colo. Their responsibility was to evaluate each entry based on the following criteria:

Originality as exhibited in un-usual design, stitch choice and/or manipulation

Technical Rendering exemplified by a card that is in registration and well-sewn

Use of Color reflected in choices that convey the feeling or emotion of the selected genre

Presentation demonstrated by executing a clean design and proper finishing of the various details

Overall Appeal realized through all of the card elements working together to elicit a reaction

The Greeting Card Contest is intended to entice both novice and established embroiderers to spread their creative wings - a challenge which all this year's winners took to heart.

GENERAL & GRAND PRIZE -

"Dragonflies on Organza and Hand-Painted Fabric" Jackye Mills Mills Studio, Sidney, B.C. www.jackyemills.com

Jackye Mills' winning entry in the General card category caught the judges' eyes enough to garner Grand Prize honors as well. Comments centered on the cleanliness of the design and the striking use of color, which effectively reflected the subtle iridescence of a dragonfly's wings.

The image is part of an apparel line that Mills sells at boutiques, gift shops and craft fairs, as well as on her Web site. Originating as a sweater embellishment, transposing the concept to a card only took Mills a couple of hours one evening.

"My background is as a watercolor painter, so I have made all different kinds of cards before," says Mills. "I just hadn't used embroidery with them."

Hand painting and embroidering the card background presented no problems, but lighting the filmy insects on the front was more of an issue.

"The organza piece was a little more difficult to sew," says Mills, who had never attempted embroidering on the sheer fabric before. "I just liked the looks of it for the card and I thought it would be a nice weight."

She didn't alter her digitizing to account for the difference in surfaces, but obviously minor modifications didn't matter in the end. The roughly 18,000 stitches were rendered on a Tajima singlehead embroidery machine.

Mills concedes she had considered entering previous Stitches competitions, but had never made the time to actually do it.

"Doing this card was kind of an inspiration for me," says Mills. "You get hooked into doing the same production items all day, every day. It was nice to make the effort to do something different."

VALENTINE'S DAY -

"Iris with Hearts" Jackye Mills Mills Studio, Sidney, B.C. www.jackyemills.com

Mills also managed to best her competitors in the Valentine's Day category by blending hand painting and embroidery, a style that has become the artist's trademark. Another embellishment that started as an original design for a sweater with accompanying coat and vest, the flowering affinity for this winner was its cleanliness and simplicity. The earth tones made this bloom especially appealing, even for her normally indifferent spouse.

"It wasn't too feminine," notes Mills of her 12,000-stitch iris with hearts. "I thought in those colors it looked more like a card you could give a husband or a son."

Living on picturesque Vancouver Island offers Mills numerous natural opportunities to express herself. Early in her artistic education, she studied drawing, painting, sculpture and textile design. Initially a weaver and watercolor artist represented in various Canadian galleries, her attention eventually turned towards textiles and clothing design. Over the last 15 years or so, Mills has developed the unique look that won her this prize.

"That is the basis behind my business," she says, "being able to combine hand painting and embroidery together."

The owner of Mills Studio hand paints and embroiders each of her personal pieces. As with her Grand Prize entry: "I had a good time doing it. You work hard all year and it's nice to get recognition that you are doing something."

WINTER HOLIDAYS -

"Christmas Window" Lana Rabinovich Fine Embroidery Inc., Brooklyn, N.Y. www.embroideryny.com

Lana Rabinovich makes no secret of her love for Christmas and the atmosphere it creates. This passion was the inspiration for her triumphant insight into the darker season of the year.

"It is such a magic view," she reflects, "especially at night with the light from inside the house."

The design itself is simple and only took a couple of hours, but the layers of hand-sewn holly and poinsettias delicately placed on the windowsill impart a dimensional perspective. Rabinovich deliberately chose subdued colors for the plants to create a more sophisticated look. The window is organza and the selection of a holographic thread to embroider its frame further added to the glowing effect.

"First, I did the poinsettia then I did the holly leaves," she says. "Then I embroidered everything on the window and pasted it to the paper."

Rabinovich is less forthcoming about the card stock, which presented her the most difficulty. She does, however, ad-mit to drawing the bricks with a colored pencil, a touch that took her back to kindergarten. The "Merry Christmas" sentiment projecting through the window was written with a marker and color-matched to the holly. Rabinovich also declines to reveal her technique for sewing over the wire that supports the flowers.

"That's my secret," she says with an unmistakable smile in her voice. "When I am very, very old I will probably write a book and reveal all my secrets. But I am not very old yet."

BIRTHDAY -

"Time to Party!!!" Brenna M. Wygant Anchorage, Alaska

"I was looking for something festive and colorful," says Brenna Wygant. "Throughout my whole life I have been doing fiber arts in one form or another."

In addition to supporting herself as an independent artist, Wygant has been working at Alaska Serigraphics in Anchorage for the last year and a half where she received training on Wilcom's digitizing software. She became sufficiently proficient to sew up the win in this category with a colorful invitation to a celebration that showcases her background in beading, weaving and sewing.

"I like to combine different materials when I work and wanted to do something along the lines of a fantastic party theme." The jester on the cover sets the tone, while the removable "Cheers" characters inside were sewn in a sunny Mexicali font using Madeira variegated thread to further lighten the mood. Wygant did the work at home on a Brother machine she purchased about five years ago. The entire project took approximately 10 hours to execute - rather remarkable considering Wygant began with just a vague notion of what she wanted to accomplish.

"I don't start with any preconceived plan," she readily admits, "and that keeps it interesting. I just work on the fly, so a project kind of grows as I go along."

When a problem presents itself in her free-form approach, the obstacle merely becomes part of the ongoing design.

"The joy of combining materials, that is what interests me," states Wygant. "Mostly, I am playing with fabrics and materials and exploring the different facets of digitizing."

Gary Snyder is a Denver-based freelancer who writes regularly for Stitches Magazine.