Heirloom Memories Sampler by Thea Dueck of The Victoria Sampler!
I quite seriously have not touched this since early 2005. I can’t believe it’s been over 5 years! Shameful. But, as I mentioned, I have now repurposed it to be in memory of my late mother-in-law, who passed away in October of 2005. I just charted out her name and birth and death dates. I swear I have terrible luck lately because it took me more than half an hour to chart the darned thing. I had to do the dates over a dozen times. Apparently, I just can’t count correctly, nor could I maintain consistent spacing. And then I couldn’t center it correctly. Sheesh. But, it’s done and I’m ready to go. Almost.
What’s been keeping me away from this piece so long are that nearly everything is done except for the bullion roses. I have a strong aversion to them. Partially because they are difficult (do NOT try to do them with cotton, you will only get frustrated with your failure; you need to use silk so that it slides nicely off of the needle; and make sure you use a milliner needle, which doesn’t have a bump where the eye is, but is a straight shot of metal) and partially because they are freeform. I’m anal, people. I like symmetry, regularity and predictability. Freeform is not in my vocabulary. So, I avoid it. Like the plague. Unfortunately, there are bullion roses all over this piece. Seriously. Three large ones, five medium-sized ones and eight buds. That’s a lot of bullion roses, especially when you dislike stitching them.
I’m a big girl, though. I need to suck it up, go grab a little scrap of fabric, some miscellaneous ends of silk floss and do some practicing. I did some back in November on the bellpull I stitched for my father-in-law and his wife, but I wasn’t totally happy with them. In reality, they didn’t look THAT bad, so I just need to do them and forget about them. It’s not like I didn’t just have Thea teaching me one-on-one in February. It’s time to put on my big girl panties and deal with it!
Although… I think I’ll do the hardanger section first, so that I’m not trying to roll the sections with the bullion roses up in the scroll frame later. You know, for something to do while I practice. 😉
Oh, and the My Dad pillow is going to go in the mail sometime in the next couple of days. I’m really bad about forgetting to mail important things on time, like bills and such, so I’d definitely rather be late-early than late-late.
Or you could just substitute something you like better for the bullion roses.
I have this in my stack of items to stitch. Want it to be a joint piece for my mother- and father-in-law.