Mercy Goodehart's Sampler

Mercy Goodehart's Sampler, an original design by Shakespeare's Peddler

Finally, Mercy has finished her sampler.  This was definitely a labor of love, and this was a lot of fun to stitch.  I love the colors and am really pleased with the finished design.  Mercy is a fictitious stitcher, and I have sprinkled fictitious initials throughout the sampler (including RW, the initials of her instructor.)  Simon, Mercy's faithful tabby cat is up in the righthand corner, and you may notice tiny initials in each of the four corners: M, M, L and I -- for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ("I's" and "J's" were sometimes used interchangeably.)

The entire sampler is worked in lovely shades of green, gold, dark chocolate, cream...and even a pale teal blue and a vivid red...all are Needlepoint Silks.  I have also included a DMC conversion, for those who prefer to use these threads.  (See below for the supply list.)

Everyone who sees the sampler is enamored with that crazy striped bird.  He was fun to design, but even more fun to stitch.  The stitches are primarily cross stitch over-two and over-one (for the verse and other words).  I also used Algerian Eye stitches for the large alphabet.  I toyed with the idea of NOT filling in the background behind the smaller alphabet (it added considerably to my stitch time.)  I think anyone could leave the background out, but I'm actually really happy that I decided to plug away at it, as I think that cream stripe adds visually to the piece.

Supply List:

Stitch count: 315 by 273

(about 17 by 15 1/2 inches on 36 count linen)

Fabric: 36 count Vintage Exemplar by Lakeside Linens

Needlepoint Silks:

203

222

315 (I used my first skein down to the last few strands...you might need 2 skeins.)

333

336 (2)

356

505

587 (3)

641

692

693

764

851 (3)

901

953

965

Frame is by Neblitt's, my local frame shop (isn't it gorgeous?)

The chart retails for $18.00, and you can get it and the supplies on my Etsy site: Letters Great and Small.  Or ask your local shop to order it from Norden Crafts or Hoffman Distributing.

On to the next!