A Special Gift from Mother to Daughter

Every year Marsha and her daughter Paulette stitch a sampler for each other as a gift.  They never know what the other one is stitching until the great "reveal".  I was very honored this year that Marsha chose my Hannah Cummins sampler to stitch for Paulette.  She chose this sampler because she loved the verse.

Look at the exquisite frame that Marsha chose!  Wow!  It certainly makes me drool!

Marsha and Paulette have so much fun each year with their winter sampler exchange.  I thought you might enjoy reading Paulette's version of the exchange on her blog.

Thank you, Marsha and Paulette, for sharing your great "reveal".  I bet you two are already planning which samplers to stitch next year.

Thank you to all who wrote regarding my predicament regarding the DMC thread colors for the Sarah E. Pope sampler.  Several people wrote that DMC didn't name their colors.  Instead the designers chose their own names to go with the numbers.  That certainly does explain why my two sets of names are so different.  I know that some of the dyelots have changed over the years because of the differences in dyes used, but the color changes are not nearly as large as I had at first thought.  (Thank goodness!)

Here is another photo of my sampler as of today.  I'm using 36-count Pecan Butter linen from Lakeside Linens.  My progress is slow because I have discovered in order to get enough thread coverage I need to repeat the first leg of each stitch.  (Earlier I tried stitching everything with two plies of thread, and that was too heavy.  Then I tried stitching everything with one ply of thread, and that was too skimpy.  My method of having two plies for the first leg and one for second leg is just perfect, albeit much slower than stitching the whole sampler with either one or two plies of thread.)

I'm getting ready to put Sarah aside to work on Ann Hair (reproduced by The Scarlet Letter) as part of Nicola's Scarlet Letter Year.  I'm in love with this sampler! Look at the mug, coaster, and note card I have of Ann's sampler.  (I wonder if "she" thinks I'm stalking her!) Now all I need to do is stitch her sampler!

I first started stitching Ann's sampler years ago.  I got in all of the vine across the top only to find out that I had misjudged and had only a half-inch linen margin on the right side.  My framer said she could work with that, but I decided to start over on a new piece of linen.  I got this far before putting the sampler aside (for heaven knows what reason!)



I recently decided to retrieve poor Ann upon learning of Nicola's SAL. Alas, I found I had issues once again. When I examined my progress thus far, I became fearsome that I wouldn't have enough thread for the border.  I ordered some more silks last week, and as feared the dyelots had changed over the years.  I'm certainly not going to start all over again because as you can see I already have in two lines of the verse (stitched over one linen thread!), and I don't want to re-do that.  So...my afternoon task is to rip out the border.  Wish me luck!  I hope to start making "positive" progress tomorrow.