Ta-da!!
A Note on the final product: I decided not to stitch the square border around the edge that’s called for in the pattern. I just liked it better this way. I thought the border detracted a bit from the design. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last pattern I stitched exactly as designed. Hmmmm….
To the left, we have the latest incarnation of “A Quaker Study” by Carriage House Samplings, as stitched by yours truly. This is the sum total of my work to date, the whole piece so far, in all its Quakery glory.
Although it’s been a couple months since the end of my last ten-hour rotation (ahem! July! ahem!), I’d really like to emphasize how fast this project is to stitch. Once I started stitching on this project in earnest, I could really see the progress I was making.
This is also one of those projects that looks a lot better “in person,” so to speak, than in photographs. Or maybe it’s just my photography… Or the lighting… Yeah, that’s it–it’s the lighting! Also, for some reason, these photos have a kind of bluish tint to them, at least on my monitor. In real life, there’s no blue in this pattern at all.
Oh, to have a professional photographer at one’s beck and call!
To the left is a photo focusing on the progress made from hours 20 to 30, basically everything below the first row of letters. If you want to see the last progress shot, taken after 20 hours of stitching, go here.
With any kind of luck, another ten hours ought to do it.
“A Quaker Study” is humming right along, due largely to the fact that many of the design elements are repeats so there’s not a lot of time spent consulting the chart every few minutes.
The stark, geometric look of this sampler is so beautiful to me, and you know I’m a sucker for anything with the alphabet on it. It also reminds me a little bit of the brown and gold calico quilts my grandmother used to make. In fact, the first quilt she ever helped me make was a wall-hanging with a large eight-pointed star on it not unlike the small repeated star motif just above and below the alphabet on this sampler. I hadn’t thought of that connection until just now. Funny.
This is the third or fourth time I’ve worked with Splendor silks by Rainbow Gallery (colors: S1038, S1039, and S1040). I’m using the lightest brown and darkest brown for the geometric motifs and the medium (S1039) for the lettering of the alphabet. So far I give them a positive review. The strands divide easily, but not too easily, and even though silk can be notoriously fragile, these strands hold up very well in spite of the fact that I like to use relatively long lengths of floss while stitching. To me, time spent rethreading the needle is time lost.
Today was one of those exasperating, not-a-thing-goes-right kind of days except for exactly two things.
First, I finished my ten-hour rotation on “The Quaker Study” by Carriage House Samplings:
Floss: Splendor (silk) by Rainbow Gallery, colors S1040 & S1038, one strand over two
Fabric: Creme Brulee, 40 count, by R & R Reproductions
Here’s what it’s going to look like when I’m finished:
And, even better, I filed my dba! A single-page form (downloaded from the web, no less) and a check for $23 and I am officially on my way to wealth and fame in the world of cross stitch! As Homer Simpson would say, “Woo-hoo!”
The Lyf So Short 