Adding to Jenny's Sampler

My lecture preparation and family activities took all my time over our long weekend (I shouldn't be surprised, it always happens) but I finally have a quiet hour to show you what I am working on.

To start with, here is the page from the Color Play book by Joen Wolfrom that I used to get an idea of what colours I should look for. I used the same book when I was trying to figure out a palate for Christine's sampler. Here is the aqua page - since that is the colour of Jenny's band.

Here are the flosses I found to go with the band. I just loved the way these colours looked together and decided I had to use them.

As I mentioned at some point, I wanted to do something to do with the sea, but then the colours I found weren't the colour of sea life. Then I remembered this great sea horse motif I found while researching Assisi work at
http://www.stitchstitch.info/english/designs%20small/seahorses.htm
so I used that. I have designed a shell motif to go above and below this, but I wanted you all to see the start.

Band RR - Celtic design

I have just completed the next section of Christine's Band. This will be sent on to the next member of the group in the morning.

It was really difficult to know how best to continue the Band RR. Margaret's gorgeous orange 8 star design, Jenny's amazing open-work design and the intricacy of Christine's original work each being a very difficult act to follow.

The one thing that I focussed on was Christine's liking for stylised plants. After this, I had a very lucky find. I found myself in a Charity shop. Not unusual for me - since I often go into Charity shops to donate items, or just to browse. This time I found this wonderful book:

The book is full of the most wonderful illustrations - photographs and page border designs. I found it to be full of inspiration , with so many textures as well as images.

I chose this photograph:

The eventual design was based around the 12th century stone-carved doorway. I let myself play around with colours using the palette set by the Band RR itself. The completed design changed a little from the original sketch, most notably in the use of colour.