A Bluestocking Knits

"Quaker Virtues"

Ta-da!

I made a bit of a push to finish this, since it was so close.  I started it on the 27th of September, 2020, and finished it on the 24th of December, 2023 -- just over three years.  It is of course the "Quaker Virtues" by Bygone Stitches (and it is apparently back in print since I bought the chart in I think 2019).  After much internal debate, I decided on DMC threads -- since it requires 30 skeins of the main color! -- specifically 931 Antique Blue Medium, with 930 Dark for the virtues and 932 Light for the scattered letters and numbers.  I admit to making a lot of subtle fixes and changes -- there were a rather shocking number of mistakes in the chart, in motifs that are supposed to be symmetrical -- and I moved more than a few motifs a thread or two to get what I felt was a better balance.  I also added a second line around the outside, which I felt gives it a bit more finish -- but considering the size of the thing, it's a wonderful chart, and I enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

I had been sharing my progress via text messages with a dear friend who moved to another state a few years ago, and when I sent the photo of the finished piece, she said she thought this was her favorite of all of the stitching I've done.  I had been pondering pretty much the whole three years what I would eventually do with it -- it's I think 29" x 23" (74 x 59 cm)! -- and so I said quite impulsively, "Would you like to have it!"  She said yes, and as it was her birthday that very day, I took these photos, wrapped it up, and sent it off.  No time therefore, alas, to wait for better light, or to re-take that blurry one! but I was very pleased that she was so delighted, and am glad to know that it is going to a good home.

(I added in a "date" of sorts, changing two of the small characters near bottom center to 2 and 3 for the year.  I was going to change the E and U to my initials but there was no time with Christmas coming -- we had twelve here sitting down to Christmas dinner! and hosted another gathering of eight the next day -- and our friends unexpectedly in town that weekend, and so I put a quick inscription in backstitch along the selvage instead ....)

Mrs. Campbell and Friends

"Mrs. Campbell, 1805" by Hands Across the Sea.  I started this just before New Year's and am enjoying it tremendously -- amused at the same time that I looked at it a bit askance for a while after first seeing it, for Mrs. Campbell's rather severe motto "Keep your work clean and pay Attention to it".  Clearly a teacher! and a stern Scottish one, too.  But, to be honest, I love the fact that she has fit everything in so neatly -- solving the eternal Corner Problem with a clever and pleasing arrangement -- and that while the border "flowers" are strict and orderly, even with the colors repeating in the same order on all four sides, the center field is a nearly-riotous pair of leaves-and-flowers garlands with brightly-colored little birds -- a calm and reserved outside with a playful inside.  I get that.

It seemed obvious to me, after working a couple of Darlene O'Steen's designs, that the border lines should be in alternating backstitch, although the chart makes no distinction and so presumably indicates simple crosses and backstitch.  (The back of Mrs. Campbell's original seems pretty clearly to show that something is different between the three-stitch sections, but it certainly does not look like backstitch, to be sure.)  I enjoy the rhythm of alternating backstitch, though, and so it did not feel that I was doing Mrs. Campbell a disservice at all (!) to work it that way.

Completely coincidentally, I had just bought a piece of the recommended linen, "Woodsmoke" by Tabby Cat Linens, but it is quite brown, where the Hands Across the Sea image looks much more to be of a rather yellowed linen.  Try as I might, I could not picture this on a café-au-lait brown, and so I bought a piece of Zweigart "Antique Linen," a lovely off-white, thinking that my coffee-dye experiments with "Zoé Elie" were quite successful, and I might put the finished "Mrs. Campbell" through something similar.  I'm liking the DMC colors quite a lot, though, so I might just leave it as-is.

And the "Wisdom Sampler" is now back on a frame as my long-term WIP.  (I have in fact finished the "Quaker Virtues" that was in this frame, but can't get the photos from my phone yet ....) --

I managed to get two more things actually framed for hanging -- I can work the samplers much more quickly than I can get them framed, certainly.  Jane Jameson's charming-if-scruffy 1830 original is now in an "oops" frame that Laura brought home for me from work.  I had already archival-mounted the sampler on a cotton fabric-covered board, thinking to someday have it framed fairly close to the edges of the stitching, as so many historical samplers were, but a free frame was too good to turn down, especially when it was the right proportion and not a bad fit aesthetically either.  I really wanted to get this under glass and away from the elements as soon as possible, and so Laura and I went to Michael's one day and the framing clerk suggested this dusty-green mat and Laura suggested the float-style mounting -- good choices, both.  The other sampler is of course my "Lady Floral Brittany," now in one of the three antique frames I bought a few years ago with my birthday money -- wish I could have bought more of them, they were all as beautiful as this one.