Finished!!!! Yippee!!! I will admit that I was delusional when I figured I could knock this out in a month, finishing a block a day. I was lucky to finish one block in 3 days, and that's if I didn't do anything else. But...it is finished and now I can move onto another project which I have already picked out.
However, I will point out the problems or pitfalls that I ran into while working on this project. First, originally these blocks were sold individually. Evidently, Carriage House was asked to create a sampler using all the blocks together, which they did. But.....if you are looking at the pattern, please be aware that on the list of supplies they call for Bittersweet to be used as the backdrop color for the word. I kept true to the pattern and used Bittersweet, which whoever did the original one for the picture on the pattern used a golden color. Which really is neither here nor there, you can decide to use whatever color you want, just want you to be aware that when you are looking at the individual blocks all of a sudden you will note that random outlines for the words are done in different colors then what they suggest on the supply list. I thought it about it later and it would have been very pretty to pick a color out of each block to outline the work, as long as you are smart enough to do some pre-planning and don't end up with the same colors next to each other.
In addition, after perusing all the pages several times, I noted that there was no suggestion(s) whatsoever for the border. Although it is charted it, there are no colors suggested to use. I actually wrote to Carriage House and asked if that was on oversight in the pattern, and maybe there was a page missing. No....I was told that it was up to the stitcher to chose the colors. I decided not to limit my border to 3 colors, cuz I would get so sick of working on he same 3 colors over and over again for 90 flowers. Yes. There are 90 flowers, I know I counted them. Instead, I chose to use color combinations that were already used in the blocks. I used dried thyme for the border vines and leaves.
I used mulberry/pomegranate for the first flower. Deep Sea/Peacock for the second, Bittersweet/Fragrant Clove for the 3rd, Cherry Bark/Old Red Paint for the 4th, and last DMC 327/Hyacinth for the last.
Well, I finally got to start stitching on this particular sampler. Got to admit the letter A was a real doozey. I am not sure that I worked on 36 ct. linen before, but I can tell you thank god I didn't purchase the 40 ct. as called for in the pattern. I would have been blind! In fact most of the letter A was worked using the super duper little round magnifier part of my stitching magnifier. I didn't have as much difficulty when I went to a darker thread. I don't know if by then I was used to the count, or that the lighter color thread was also thinner. The colors are terrific. However I can tell you that these pictures do not do justice to the color of the linen which is more on the brown side then is reflected in these pictures. Somehow when I purchased the thread, I missed the color Tin Bucket. Although they give you the DMC equivalent it seems to me that the DMC color is more blue and the Gentle Arts Thread is more on the grey side, from what I can see from a on line picture. WHAT TO DO? Do I go all the way back to Alexandria for the one skein of thread? Or improvise using the DMC? The problem is if I go to IN STITCHES, I can't seem to walk out of there with the one thing that I went there for. I always see another pattern that I just can't seem to not have. Or some sort of stitching necessity.
