And They Sinned...

I have been wanting to show my "And they Sinned..." sampler for quite awhile now.  Isnt' she beautiful??  I stitched her on 35 count Highland Mist with the called for Gentle Arts Sampler Threads.  This sampler took me 4 years to complete.  I started stitching in January 2005 and then put it aside when I went to the GLR seminar where I took the Immigrant Sampler.  Shortly after the seminar I became a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and poured my heart and soul into becoming a rising star.  That was great but this poor sampler was horribly neglected in my WIP pile of 1 (I tend to stitch on one thing at a time so this is all I had going).  I picked it up again and stitched on and off on it. 

In 2008 I moved to Colorado and this (and the frame I had purchased) came with me.  By Christmas 2007 I had everything but the green area at the bottom completed so I stitched the outline of the grass so I could at least order my frame.  In early 2009 I spent a few months in upstate NY for work and was determined to finish this project so I brought it along and got it done.

While at the GLR seminar in 2005 there was a fair amount of chatter about this piece and several people had talked about how they were personalizing it.  I decided to stitch my three cats into it.  I love this band anyway with the Lion so I removed a sheep or two and added my kitties.  I just love how it turned out!   You can also see a good close up of the frame in the below photo, this frame was also ordered from Lynn's of Madison. 

 

Sarah Holmes Buck

This is an antique sampler that I purchased several years and I finally finished reframing it!  It's finished in the same manner as the Immigrant Sampler and I kind of used it as practice for framing that piece. 

You can see from the piece that it has a dark stain near the top and is faded, some spots more than others.  Also, the sampler isn't dated so it wasn't worth much but I liked it so added it to my collection of exactly 1 antique sampler.   :)

It's also curious that the last band is a different color, so either the personalization was added later, stitched in a different fiber or were sitting so it didn't fade as much as the rest. 

When this sampler arrived it was glued into the frame that it came in.  I removed it from the frame and carefully removed as much of the glue from the linen as I could.  I then found this teal fabric to back it on but before I did I sewed a piece of muslin to the back of the sampler to help stabilize it and to prevent the blue from showing through too much.  I think it turned out well and looks nice hanging in my living room with a bunch of other blue samplers. 

Sarah used cross stitch, eyelet stitch, rhodes crosses, cross stitch over one, rice stitch, queen stitch and satin stitch in her sampler.  I've though about charting her just to see how that would go but haven't gotten around to it yet.  I'd rather stitch or stamp!  LOL! 

Here's a close up of her frame, also purchased from Lynn's of Madison:

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my friends, family and blog readers (although many of you fall into one of the first two categories)!  I wish you a day filled with family, friends, good tidings, cheer, peace and happiness! 

Stocking Card

I love this card!  I designed this for a swap that I participated in with my home group of demonstrators back in September.  I know, I'm a bad blogger for waiting so long to post this, oops!  This card is made by using a 6 x 12" piece of cardstock folded in half and then running it through the Holiday Stocking die (124098).  if you place the fold just below the top of the stocking in the die then you get a card that can be folded open instead of having to write on the back.  I embossed the front of the stocking with the Vintage Wallpaper Embossing folder (120175) and added a mini jingle bell (124116) as a finishing touch.  Enjoy!

Don't forget that your last day to order items from the Holiday Mini Catalog is January 3 so don't miss out!

Broccoli Band

I know, some of you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about.  Well, I've spent some time recently stitching the bottom, inner band of Elizabeth Sheffield.  The picture on the pattern makes it looks like this band contains giant broccoli or else really little animals.  I know that they are supposed to be trees with giant animals but I've had it in my head that this is broccoli so that's what I thought about when stitching it.  Take a look:

With any luck I'll finish her around the New Year so my New Year's start can be the only thing I'm stitching on for awhile.  Oh, and I decided that Paradise Lost will be my New Year's start.  I still have the band with the people and house which will take awhile but I'm almost done with the bottom of the sampler.  I decided to wait to stitch the people for last because I think they're going to be a lot of fun!! 
Here's my overall progress on Elizabeth...

The Immigrant Sampler

Several years ago, 2005 actually I attended a Great Lakes Regional Seminar in Illinois.  It was actually co-sponsored by my chapter, Needle's Nest.  I took this great class by Lucy Lyons Willis called "The Immigrant Sampler".  I enjoyed stitching it with the dove's eye flag, hardanger band, and just the colors and the way it came together.  However, the neat part was that Lucy suggested that we do a little bit of family history research and add the initials and whatever other information we could find about ancestors who had immigrated to the US.  I didn't pick the first of my relatives to come over but rather picked a family on my father's side who arrived in 1864 on a ship named "The Stella".  Those are their initials, the year and the ship name all in the band with the ship.  I also wrote up the history that I found and put a copy on the back and another copy inside the backing paper. 

You can see by the date that I finished stitching this sampler in 2005, the same year as the class but I just finally framed it and hung it up in my living room.  It looks great there!  When I finished it in 2005 I also completed the hem stitching but the way it was designed it was to be mounted on the teal backing fabric and then mounted in a frame.  Let's just say that I'm a good procrastinator and put off stitching it to the teal fabric until a few weeks ago.  I'm somewhat sorry I did too since it looks great and was super easy!  And, as I was stitching it to the backing fabric I was able to straighten it quite a bit.  With all the open and hardanger work the sampler had somewhat wobbly borders but it's much better now!  I actually have another piece framed this same way and I did both of them in a day to get them out of the guest room where my parents were going to be staying at Thanksgiving and it was suprising at how fast and easy this was.  I guess I just needed guests in order to get it done! 

Baby Quilt

OK, so I found a photo of the baby quilt I made.  This is actually the second or third quilt that I started and the first one that I finished completely.  I just LOVE these bright colors!  This is me with my friend Kristin, the new mom to be and the recipient of this fun quilt! 

In this photo you just get a taste of the quilt but the baby is a girl so I picked bright colors with pinks but not all totally pink.  This quilt is machine pieced and quilted with a hand sewn binding. 

Here is a so-so quality photo of the back of the quilt.  It's an adorable green and pink check/gingham print.  However, the quilt was a bit larger than the fabric wide.  Because I didn't want to even attempt to piece the back together, instead I cut it about 1/3 of the way down and added a pieced strip to give me enough width that I could quilt and bind it into the finished product.