Sara adds her special touches to Petit Carnet d'Ouvrages II

I was delighted to receive these photos of Petit Carnet d’Ouvrages, Livre II from Sara S. who lives in North Carolina. Sara wrote, “I finally am getting around to emailing you these pictures! I stitched this a long time ago…well it seems like it anyway! I was so scared of doing the finishing. And really the directions were great. It really wasn't that difficult to do!

"I stitched it with regular DMC. I started with 815 and somewhere along the way I accidentally used 816, so instead of frogging it, I just interspersed the two colors and it ended up looking like I used a hand dyed thread!

“I changed the title and put "by Sara" on the front. I think it said book two maybe? And since I hadn't done book one, I didn't want to put book two!

“I am curious as to why there isn't a large N on the pages? I never even noticed until a 12 year old girl was looking at it and said, "Why is there no N?" I said, "Well I have no idea!“I'm working, quite slowly, on the turtles! I'm quite nervous about putting them together! I'm having a hard time finding the right felt to use, but that's just my excuse for now! I still need to actually stitch them!”

Don’t you love the way Sara personalized her little book by changing the title to read Small Book of Samplers and then by adding her name?

Sara is not the first one to inquire about the missing “N”. If you look at the alphabet in the second photo, you’ll see that there wasn't enough room for me to put the entire alphabet. I needed to leave out one letter. Sampler lovers are used to sometimes not seeing the “J” or “U”, so I wanted to do something a little bit unusual, by picking out another letter to omit and seeing how many people would notice. I’m not sure how I happened to pick the letter “N”. Regardless, I think this makes for an interesting bit of conversation, and you can see how well others look at your needlework if they notice the missing letter. Sara, I think you should reward that girl with a special treat for her keen observation.

Sara, you did a fantastic job with the stitching and assembly of your book. I hope you found a special place to showcase this little jewel. I keep my stitched books in a glass-front bookcase and have them all standing up. They look quite charming, in my humble opinion.

Lovely work from Japan and France

More wonderful delights! These projects were stitched by needlewomen from Japan and France.

First is An Emblem of Love stitched by Tomomi from Japan. Tomomi wrote, "I love your design. I used Brethren Blue Gentle Art thread and 40-count Wichelt linen." Tomomi personalized her sampler with her name and anniversary date. How lovely!

I was inspired by some of the old pattern books to create a series of stitched accordion-style books. In addition to the front and back covers, there are eight more pages of stitched alphabets, borders, and motifs. The models were stitched over one linen thread; this makes the books very small--they can easily fit in the palm of your hand. The little books look so cute standing up on a shelf, yet they are so small that you can easily tuck them in your stitching bag. If desired, you can stitch the pages over two linen threads to create larger books.

Dawn Lombard from Rochefort, France completed one of these books, Petit Carnet d'Ouvrages, Livre II. Dawn wrote, "Here are a few photos of my first With My Needle project. It was a real pleasure to do.

I used 32-count Murano fabric and DMC 815 thread. Even though I was a bit worried about the finishing techniques the instructions were really easy to follow and I managed it without any problems. I'm looking forward to starting my next project now -Petit Carnet d'Ouvrages, Livre I."

What a beautiful job, Dawn!! As you are well aware, this project has more stitching than first meets the eye.

Chi from Japan has finished not one but two of these little pattern books!! Wow--that is quite an accomplishment. Chi, your books look wonderful! You did a fabulous job!

Petit Carnet d'Ouvrages is French and translated into English means Little Booklet of Works. Veronique from France helped me when I was chosing the name for this series of books. She told me that "ouvrages" typically refers to "works done by women". Thank you, Veronique, for your help.