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Monday 9 May 2011

A Dark Alphabet progress

I finally finished the letter C.  C is for Coven which features three witches silhouetted against a yellow harvest moon.
This design is being produced a letter at a time by A Note of Friendship.  Every few weeks another letter appears on their blog along with lots of historical information about the picture chosen and the stitches in it.  Here is my progress so far:

I decided to make a sampler 4 blocks by 7 blocks with 2 blocks blank for personalisation, one at the top left and the other bottom right.  I am so pleased I decided to do it this way as it mean C is in the corner which is the best place for such a densely stitched block.

Frankly I was regretting deciding to do the piece over 1 halfway through the first witch.  It is sooooooooo time-consuming.  In this close-up I can see the tension was too tight in the righthand witch but it doesn't show further away!  I resorted to timing myself on each length of the yellow - 22 minutes was the quickest time to stitch one length, average 30 minutes!  It made the end seem closer somehow.

D is for Devil is waiting in the wings and I'm eager to see what E stands for.

You must check out the blog if you are interested in the history of samplers and stitching, it's fascinating.  They are currently recounting the story of their trip to England which is fun and informative.  I love the observation that England appears to have no schools, all the children are simply loaded on buses and taken to the nearest museum for the day!  Anyone who has visited a tourist attraction during termtime can certainly relate to that.

9 comments:

Ziggyeor said...

Yeah congrats on finishing you block. I can't wait to see how the next one turns out.

Susan said...

Your alphabet looks great. I'm collecting the patterns and trying to come up with a layout for this one.

Joysze said...

Jo, it's looking great. The sampler is going to look awesome when you're done! :D

Dani - tkdchick said...

What a different sampler, looking great!

Giovanna said...

I'm really enjoying watching you stitch this - kind of living vicariously, lol. It's gorgeous!

Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...

That's so funny Giovanna, it's how I feel about watching all the Chatelaines and HAED growing. I may never do one myself but I can enjoy everyone else's progress.

Thanks for all the nice comments on the sampler. I'm nearly done on the lettering for D now, nice and quick!

Terry said...

I love this design, cool! And I also love Bluebeards Mermaid..

Lisa said...

Great progress on this, I think the C block is my favourite so far.

Jo said...

Great progress - I'm not a fan of over 1 stitching at all, so good luck with that! D for devil sounds fun :)