Norma's band - revisited

Norma's band has now been completed and has arrived back safely with Norma herself. It has always been nervewracking to have a piece of work travelling through the post. However, since we live so very far apart there was no choice in the matter. The relief was enormous when I heard it had arrived.

The threads above were the collection I made to find suitable colours to work with the sampler as it was when I received it. I had thought of autumnal (Fall) colours and designs of leaves. I soon discarded this idea since another design was of acorns.



I came up with this design. I had toyed with the idea of using the lovely wing shapes used in the birds stitched by Sarah.



The stitching I used was basically Blackwork. The wing shapes have miniature figure twos inverted and in mirror image since the overall shape reminded me of the number. I trawled through my Blackwork books to find inspiration for the other shapes. I eventually discarded the idea in the lighter blue shape, finding something more appropriate in scale.

So now Norma's sampler looks like this.

Norma's band

This is Norma's band. It arrived in my hands yesterday morning.

The colours are richer than my photos can show. The base fabric is a lovely rich honey colour which shows the colours used to perfection. Norma describes this cloth as 28count Quaker Cloth pumpkin colour.



The top stitching above is Norma's own work, whilst the beaded work was added by Denise.



The enchanting birds, with their silk ribbon flowers were added by Sarah.

Beneath this comes Jenny's contribution. She added Wessex Stitching with a border of interlaced herringbone.

Then there is the gorgeous blue of Christine's blackwork.

The last section is Hungarian Cross Stitch stitched by Margaret.

I have not even started to put my own ideas together yet. However, I am going through a phase of looking at the developing autumnal colours. Picking these leaves up from the path in town before coming home to find the band sampler waiting for me.

I just loved the colours and the shapes of these leaves. Perhaps something will develop from here, but I shall have to keep you waiting and wondering for a little while as my brain begins to mull things over.

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.