Sampler Sunday .... and shopping

This is my latest finish and I am so pleased with how it turned out. The graph is a freebie from Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle and Thread called May Day Sampler. I downloaded this as soon as I saw it and knew I had to stitch it. I love the rather chubby basket with the house in it. I've never seen this kind of arrangement before.



And then there is the outer border which reminds me of flying geese or prairie points, so this piece has quilting elements for me. Now I couldn't find any suggestions for fabric or threads (they may be there somewhere I'm just didn't see them), so I came up with my own combination. Now the fabric is a piece of 28 ct evenweave from Joann's. I started trying to dye it with coffee and tea but it wasn't getting dark enough for me and then I had a brilliant idea (well they always seem brilliant to me, it may just be the overhead light going on it the basement, I'm not certain). Anyway I remembered I had some RIT dye in the laundry room, so I got it out and added a glug of cocoa and a dash of tan - yes those are the technical measurements. Then I scrunched it up and walked away -- that was the hardest part, maybe even harder than scrubbing the dye off my hands. (Memo to myself - next time use rubber gloves.) So a little while passed, and I squished out the excess dye and water and rinsed it out and then took it to the ironing board and pressed the living daylights out of it. I figured this would set the dye and it has seemed to work. I loved the splotchiness of the coloring and it came out a rosy brown- very pretty. I used overdyded flosses, Gentle Arts in Parchment, Shaker White, Cinnamon, Brandy and Tropical Ocean, Crescent Colors in Jakey Brown for the alphabet (I really loved this one!), and Weeks Dye Works in Moss and I used Brick for the outer border. To personalize the piece I stitched my boys' initials in Brandy and put my hometown on the bottom. I can't wait to stitch more charts by Brenda - I love her style.



On Thursday I went to the NQA show in Columbus with my dear friends, Stephie and Cathy and had a great time. Our strategy is to do the vendors first since the good stuff goes fast and the quilts aren't going anywhere.(Hey, you know this is true!) I didn't get a lot of things but I like what I got. A couple of 1/2 yd cuts of batiks in a orangey purpley range, I think these may appear in a tote bag or two. I also got a kit for a Kaffee Fasset quilt. Stephie bought one last year and I thought about it all year and after all that deep consideration I still wanted one for me!! So they had it and I bought it. I'll show more of it when I get started sewing on it. Oh the novelty fabrics are knitting needles which will probably be used in another tote bag (you can never have too many bags - particularly if they are filled with good stuff) and the rather startled looking pigs are part of another "collection". Lately I've been finding some adorable pig fabrics - I got flying pigs, pink polka dot pigs, pigs in clothes. Don't know what I'm going to do with them but they needed to come home with me. I'll take good care of them.




And the Knitting show was just down the hall so Cathy and I checked it out. I ended up with 4 new skeins of yarn. The deep jade green and the tangerine one are by Fiber Optic Yarn and have 10% cashmere and feel soooooooo soft. The other orangey one is Online sock yarn. Sock yarn is a weakness of mine. I love to knit socks! And the pastel rainbow stuff is a shiny ribbony confection. I saw a pretty scarf made out of it and I really liked it. I wasn't sure how I would get this stuff wound. Cathy read the inside of the label (she's so smart -that's why I take her shopping with me - LOL!)and it says you need another "human being" to wind this and she volunteered to help me with this. I'm so lucky to have such great friends.

Happy stitching -

carol fun