Hi! I hope that you are surviving December and all of its potential craziness 😎. I'm trying to stay Zen but it's not easy! Something that does help is embroidery and other slow stitching projects. Here is an ongoing project.

Creating my own Off the Grid Sampler

This sampler comes from a September class with Sue Stone from TextileArtist.org It's taken me a while to get going but now I'm enjoying it a lot and looking forward to trying out stitches.

Off the Grid Sampler...so far

I'm using two layers of fabric for the embroidery. The top is a Kona cotton and the bottom is a very light cotton that I've used for backing various slow-stitching projects. I've numbered the different shapes in the pattern so that I can keep track of what stitches I've used.

Pattern and numbering to keep track of stitches

Here are a few pictures at various stages. I won't be listing every combination here unless it's something particularly interesting.

Sampler

The image below has some interesting trellis stitches with Tencel perle (section 6), double buttonhole stitch (section 5), and feather stitches in black as a filler (section 7). In sections 3 and 9, I was playing with the placement of running stitches. It's not quite what I want yet but I'm sure I'll figure it out!😊

Closeup of some stitches

The French knots below are nice and fluffy because I'm using the Tencel Perle.

French Knots within a border (section 16).
I'm still working on the border part.

My two furry helpers

I was dog sitting and asked my two helpers to sit next to the embroidery so that I could take their pictures. Twix, always wanting to please, sat for this photo while Taffy, the independent one, promptly lay down on it to sleep 😁

Twix is always happy to pose for a picture.

Taffy taking a nap on the sampler

What I learned

I was hoping to make a lovely colour-coordinated sampler but I soon gave up and am using a variety of interesting threads without being too concerned with colour. It's going to be a scrappy sampler 😊.
When I was at my brother's place, he saw my embroidery floss, left the room and then came back with a plastic bin. It contains my niece's friendship bracelet supplies which I've now inherited. (Thanks Anna!) There is some wonderful embroidery floss in there and a few interesting beads and buttons.
There was also a whole bunch of friendship bracelets that she made. I had a few of her bracelets and now with these new ones, I really want to make a "collaborative" piece. I will also include some of my daughter's bracelets. So many ideas 😉
I'm enjoying trying out combinations of stitches on this sampler. The fun part is that if it doesn't really work the first time, I can use different threads to try again.
My motto for this sampler is: It might not be pretty but it will be useful!
I was happy to try out some stitch combinations from memory. I wasn't of the name but checked them out in my trusty Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery by Sharon Baggon.
The stitches I started in section 31 are buttonhole or blanket stiches but they are not going in the direction that I want them to. Unless it's really horrible, I'm not going to undo stitching, I'm just going to work around them.😊(that's the Zen part!)

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