Jenny's Band for Margaret

Margaret's sampler now has another band. This one continues the pink & green theme that seems to be growing with this sampler. It took a while to think of a design to add, because I really wanted to open the fabric up. The fabric itself was an open weave & would pull beautifully. I had thought of pulled work, but could not quite settle for anything that made me happy. I then thought of drawn work, in particular the beautiful needleweaved patterns from northern Europe & Russia that we sometimes see in Schwalm work. I then thought that these might be a little too heavy for this sampler at this stage.

The end result is a combination of drawn & needleweaved channels edged with 4 sided stitch, combined with outlined large eyelets & radiating straight stitches.

This is the last sampler that I have to work on and I am a little sad that this is so. The RR has been such fun & the venturing out into colour combinations & new stitch combinations has certainly been an adventure that I hope to continue.

Mandy's Sampler

This is the latest work that has been done on Mandy's sampler. It is a mix of drawn thread work, pulled thread work, and blackwork. I have also used a mix of threads including DMC stranded ( 1 strand), DMC stranded (2 strands), and one of my own hand dyed DMC Perle 12's.

I have tried to be a little creative in using three colours in the drawn sections, and playing with what I could do with eyelets. The final blackwork row worked in a deep pink hopefully offers a stating point for the next person to work on this sampler. Full detais of how I worked this sampler can be read here. Mandy, I hope you like what I have done.