19 February, 2007

red & white sampler



I begun working on an ambitious project: a red and white sampler. The idea is to create the sampler from letters, symbols and whatever other motifs and just freely stitch them onto 14 threads/cm linen about 100cm x 80cm. Now that I've begun, it seems I'll need a pretty long breath to be able to see this to completion!

It's been fun digging through my Marie Claire idees magazines and French stitchery books to find letters and motifs; these stylized flowers are being worked in one of the corners of the sampler.

Further more, I've come to the conclusion that working on such fine linen is Monks' work! By comparison, quilting goes quite a bit faster! It just seems that so little gets done after stitching for an hour. For me, this pattern is not the easiest to follow so I still have to color in what I've stitched so I can more easily keep track of where I can continue. As I gain more experience it won't be necessary to do that anymore...

The wonderful thing about it is that the stitching is very calming, and once I get started, it's hard to stop. I always want to finish that last row, that last flower - very addicting. It just seems to pull me in and everything around me dissapears and all that remains is me and the needle making that next stitch.

1 comment:

Debra Dixon said...

I am very fond of samplers but rarely work them anymore. Now that I have started doing embroidery work without a canvas, it seems too disciplined to do cross stitch. I will enjoy seeing your sampler come to life!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails