Yes, yes, I know I was going to do some small Helen M Stevens' designs, and I haven't forgotten them. It's just that I, frankly, want to be able to sell on the above charts - esp as a lady in the south of England bought 'Winter' and 'Spring' from me last weekend - so I need to get them worked up.
I'm not very much into the Lizzie*Kate style of design, but more or less anything four seasons design-wise will get me, so I collected these.=) I also rather liked the third one, 'Cherish All Living Things'.
Before we went to Taiwan just over four years ago, I sold off about two thirds of my over-dyed threads - GAST and WDW, but I kept back all the colours I needed for these projects and some others that I thought I would use in other types of embroidery. So, thankfully, I had everything I needed to kit up these designs, except perhaps a piece of linen for the last one. I haven't finally decided on that one as yet.
This is the floss toss for the first one, 'Summer', and I'm ready to get going on it. I was going to wait until I'd got further on with the sampler, but, as I'm having some lung trouble which, oddly enough, restricts how I can move around and bend over a piece of work (cutting threads needs me in a certain position and I can't maintain it for long just now), I'm giving myself permish to make a start on this one! As I remember from 'Winter' and 'Spring', they're a rather a bore to stitch in parts, but shouldn't be too bad.
The sampler is coming along well though. I've finished the 'look through' section cross stitch etc and set that aside for later. I've also re-positioned the main piece in the frame and cut out the top two motifs. Sadly, my hardanger scissors declined to co-operate, so it seems we need to look at those again. However, my goldwork pair have lovely fine points and, as they're specially toughened for cutting metal threads, won't go blunt very quickly.=)
Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013
