Celebrating Friendships

Several members of the Tudor Rose Sampler Guild in the Dallas, Texas area stitched the Ackworth Friendship Book.  Two of them, Jana K. and Karen H., sent me photos to share with you.

First are photos of Jana's book.

Jana wrote, My stitching friends are my closest friends.  I have loved that we share a love of needlework; I love stitching with them; I love traveling with them; they are my favorite people to get and receive gifts from; and they have been stalwart friends in times of sorrow and when I’ve been in need of help.  So when a group of us decided to stitch this friendship book, I was “all in.”

I thoroughly enjoyed stitching panels for all my friends in the group who were doing this project.  And I love that I have this memento of my friendship with them.  Most are from members of my local EGA chapter; I stitched the cover; my sister did one block; and two friends I work with also stitched a square (one was not confident in her stitching, so I stitched her square, and she did her initials.)  I’m so glad I got it put together, too.  The notes from each of them are in the pockets and I love pulling them out to read.

Ellen, thank you for designing this piece.  I have a treasured piece of needlework because of you.

The next photos are of Karen's book.  In the photos below you'll see, in addition to her book, Karen has a carrying bag and a pinkeep. One of her dear friends stitched a square for Karen's book, but the book was assembled before Karen got the stitched square back.  Oh dear—what to do?  Karen had her finisher, Kim, make the square into a pinkeep.  What a clever idea, Karen and Kim!  You can see the notes from Karen's friends poking out of the book pockets.

Thank you, Jana and Karen, for letting me share your work.  I'm glad that you and your friends enjoyed working on the project.  I'm sure that every time you look at your books they remind you of your wonderful friendships.  Perhaps you can get others in your group to also share their work.

Is Blogspot driving anyone else as crazy as it is me???  Several weeks ago, for reasons unknown, the width of my side margins changed so that some of the text is running into the margins.  I haven't had time to try to figure out why that is happening, so please bear with me.  Then today I had issues with where the photos wanted to go, the paragraph spacing, the text alignment, etc.  EGADS!  I've often had "issues" before, but nothing like this!