Needlepoint Trunk Show Begins Friday, July 3

Designer With Cushions in Westminster Abbey To Attend

Story by Corinne Saunders

Trubey Walker’s needlepoint designs will be featured at the trunk show at Laura’s Yarn Tastic, and Walker will also be there in person. The show begins Friday, July 3, and runs every day through the end of August, with the exception of July 4. Photo submitted

Laura’s Yarn Tastic will host a trunk show featuring the work of four famous American needlepoint artists beginning Friday, July 3, and running every day through the end of August with the exception of July 4.

The needlepoint artists are Trubey Walker of Trubey Designs, Dede Ogden of Dede’s Needleworks, Sandra Gilmore of Sandra Gilmore Designs and Tonya Poplin of Two a T Designs.

Walker and Poplin will be at Laura’s Yarn Tastic several days each week and by appointment.

“[Needlepoint] is an experience of calm and individual creativity,” Walker said, adding that it isn’t strictly for women; men also do needlepoint.
“It’s a really good artform for people who are not especially artistic,” Walker said.

Walker’s designs serve as a jumping off point through which needlepoint enthusiasts can express themselves. Walker paints her designs on canvas using colors she likes, but the final needlepoint becomes an expression of the person who purchases the design and stitches it according to the pattern.

Each color represented on the canvas may have five, six or more shades of threads from which the stitcher could choose if they want variegated close shading.

Walker’s designs are on display in as prominent locations as Westminster Abbey and Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel, and as close to home as St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Church in Blowing Rock and All Saints Chapel in Linville.

A Miami native, Walker’s family began coming to Blowing Rock when she was around age four to escape polio epidemics in Florida. She spent five or six months of the year in Blowing Rock, attending school there for much of each school year through the third grade.

“I personally feel like it’s my home,” Walker said of the area.

Walker did not always envision having a career in needlepoint.

“When I went away to college I wanted to be a dress designer, [but] the sewing machine was not working well for me. After a lapse of 10 to 13 years, I went into fine art, but I wasn’t happy with that,” Walker said.

Her mother asked her to stitch a piece for the living room, and at that time, “I didn’t know you could paint on the canvas or draw on the canvas, [so] I did a free-hand floral design,” she said.

The satisfaction she found in doing needlepoint, coupled with compliments she received, led her to pursue the artform. She opened her first shop in Blowing Rock at the old Hayes house in 1971 or ’72 and kept it for eight to 10 years.

She attended a market in New York City and purchased a quantity of Dede’s works, which helped establish her business.

“Her designs put me on the map. I’d have husbands stomping in [to my shop in Blowing Rock] with their wives…they came 200 to 300 miles off the highway to buy her designs and mine, too,” Walker said.

While working in Blowing Rock, one specific request would forever redirect her talents.

“I was asked by an Episcopal priest if I would do a cope for a bishop,” Walker said. The bishop would wear this cope (ceremonial cloak), along with other vestments, during his church consecration and then at every church service he officiated, she added.

“I’d never done any religious needlework before. [It was] the start of everything for me,” Walker said.

After completing the cope for the bishop of St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Church, she went on to design coverings for kneeling benches at All Saints Chapel in Linville.

Walker moved back to Miami when her father became ill. She opened a shop in Vero Beach, and through a connection there, ended up designing for Westminster Abbey.

The green cushion Walker designed is displayed in Westminster Abbey every day except major holidays. The symbols in the middle of the cushion are Alpha and Omega—“the beginning” and “the end.” Walker also designed Westminster Abbey a red cushion for Advent and Lent and a white cushion for Christmas and Easter. Photo submitted

One of her regular customers, retired attorney C. Gorham “Doc” Phillips, was determined to stitch for Westminster Abbey and had been requesting an audience with the verger—the woman in charge of the abbey’s textiles—for two years.

When they finally met and he showed the verger samples of his work, she commissioned him to stitch three altar cushions for the prominent Gothic building that has served as the coronation church for England’s monarchs since 1066.

Phillips asked Walker to design the three cushions, which she did.

“[The cushions] are going to sit in the roped-off High Altar every day of the year. I was thrilled out of my mind,” she said.

In addition to meticulous work, the project took hours of research.

“It was really educational,” Walker said. “I didn’t know much about the Church of England. I had to investigate about it.”

Walker, Phillips, two of his stitcher friends that helped with the cushions and others attended the dedication ceremony that was held in October 2005. The date of the service was set to coincide with the commemoration of the 1,000th anniversary of St. Edward the Confessor, Kind of England and founder of Westminster Abbey.

After reading about the pair’s work at Westminster Abbey, Queen Elizabeth II requested that Walker and Phillips create two kneelers and two seat cushions for Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel.

Walker is delighted that her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren can see her work in such prominent sites as the two in England.

“It’s a wonderful tribute to have in your life, that you’ve done something so tangible that’s going to be there for a long time,” she said. “They don’t just discard these things.”

Walker currently sells her designs through her wholesale distributor Fleur-de-Paris and also stitches for private customers. A retail site created in conjunction with other needlepoint artists will be up and running soon.

About 200 designs will be for sale at the trunk show, along with an assortment of fibers and other needlepoint necessities.

“We’ll have fabulous new fibers, some [that attendees] have never seen before,” Walker said.

She may teach a class on embellishment sometime during the trunk show. Embellishment involves creating a design centered around a piece of old jewelry to show it off.

“It’s fun to stitch things I can go crazy on,” Walker said, adding that the embellished works are always one-of-a-kind.

She often uses old jewelry—some made of Bakelite plastic—she finds at antique stores for these works.

For more information about the trunk show, call Laura’s Yarn Tastic owner Laura Newton at 828-262-3336.