Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Thinking "outside of the box"

On Monday, I showed photos of several members of the Delaware Valley Sampler Guild working on their Petit Sampling Etuis. Their goal is to be through stitching the panels by February 2010 and then do the etui assembly together as a group. What a marvelous idea!!


Many guild members may do the assembly exactly as described in the directions, while others may make changes to suit their likes or needs. For example, Clara, one of the etui designers, made a round pincushion instead of a square one. She also used a bright rose lining fabric which was quite striking.

Here are some more ideas:

* If you don’t want the sides of your etui to fold down, leave off the gussets and lace the sides together.

* Suppose you don’t want to get into assembly at all. Have you thought about asking your framer to make you a casket (box) with openings on the four sides and the top to hold your stitched pieces? Wouldn’t that be exquisite?

* You could stitch one of the panels as a box lid.

* Another idea is to frame the panels, either individually or together on one piece of linen.

* And then there was Gabi’s idea (see the blog post from Saturday, September 26, 2009)--she adapted one of the panel designs to make a wonderful needlecase.

So you see the ideas are limitless. Those of you who know me know that I often think of a design as just the beginning. Take a design and see what you can do to make it special for you!!

view of the etui opened

2 comments:

Patricia Lessell said...

I LOVE it and what a great idea. I have, yet another idea for the finishing, and that is SEND IT TO YOUR FINISHER to do it. Which in my case is Deb! So I know my Etui will be finished beautifully.

Thank you so much for designing this because I really love it.

Lots of Love
Patti xxx (who can't type her name anymore and is typing it Patit)

Anonymous said...

Oh Ellen, sometimes I forget to think outside the box. Thanks for all the suggestions. I love this piece!
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