The Exemplary 2023:
Best Flower (Gail Sirna Award)
2nd Place, Professional Original

I designed this piece for an EGA chapter in Houston celebrating their 50th anniversary. Their theme for the year was bees. For the motifs, I chose fruits that depend on bees for pollination: blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries. Bees also depend on us to plant a variety of flowers for the hive to thrive; for this I chose poppy, sweet pea, borage, and cherry blossoms. The prose I wrote ties together both the importance of bees as well as the importance of needlework. I stitched the sampler in stranded silk and cotton threads using contemporary Stumpwork techniques of padding, wrapping, wired slips, and needlelace.