Tuesday, March 18, 2014

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!

13 comments:

Kristen said...

Gorgeous Theresa! Congratulations!

llknbillburg said...

Love this!! Going to Etsy right now!! Laura

Debbye said...

Simply stunning!

Jan said...

Theresa you have done it again. Just beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous! I love it!

Katken said...

A must-have!! It is beautiful....so much to look at & study. Even after stitching for over 30 years, I have no idea how you go about putting such a masterpiece together. Off to the etsy shop!!

P.J. said...

Gorgeous; love the colors and motifs!! Nicely done.

donnacrafts said...

Oh my, this sampler is outstanding. I really like the soft colors you incorporate into this sampler. Perfect!!

Rita said...

Absolutely gorgeous!

Charlene ♥ NC said...

Beautiful. I like the filled in alphabet line, too!

Shelly said...

Beautiful! I can handle over 1 and Algerian Eye, but that's probably my limit. I'll have to wrangle my budget!

Unknown said...

Beautiful!!

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