August update......

First off a very big thank you for all the nice comments about my Pride & Prejudice sampler - I truly appreciate them all!   For those of you that suggested I chart and sell this pattern, I appreciate the thoughts but 75% of this sampler is put together from published charts by designers so that would be plagiarism LOL.   I want to backstitch my name along the bottom and hopefully get it off to the framer sometime this month.

I want to say a belated thank-you to dear Heidi over at http://stitchedmemoriesintime.blogspot.com/.  Heidi and I have followed each other's blogs for some years and we did a private "Christmas in July" ornament exchange this year.    Heidi has already blogged on my gift to her (you can see it here )but I'm just now getting some photos up of her remarkable gifts to me.  I just LOVE the ornament she made - I think the silhouette of Santa who looks very Dutch-like and is stitched on both sides of the hanging ornament - how cool is that?  I love the little hanging snowflake and beads at the bottom and the colors and trims remind of the Moda French General fabrics.   Heidi also made a gorgeous scissor fob for the scissors she included - the fob has a Dutch shoe bead which I  treasure!     I've been enjoying the Dutch tea Heidi also sent me - am I lucky or what?  Thank you again Heidi!  I'm so glad we did this little exchange together.   :-)

Christmas ornament exchange from Heidi

 

I made a new start on "Quaker Christmas" by Bygone Stitches but I didn't like my materials so I decided not to continue.    Instead I've been working along with Halloween Rules (4 more rules to go!) and a new little project called "Winter Silhouette".   I saw this worked up as shop model and loved it.  It only uses one color of thread so is easy stitching.  It's a short but wide design and I've got about one-third of it done.  I think a lot of these little motifs would be cute stitched as ornaments.

"Winter Silhouette" stitched with DMC White

 on 36-ct Lakeside Linens "Midnight" linen

I also finished this lovely LHN ornament for a friend.   She bought one of these great wooden stands from Bloom Woodworks and I put a little sleeve on the back of the ornament to hold it onto the stand.  This was such a fun finish to do - I want to do some for myself now!  These stands are very nicely made and reasonably priced.  It gives you another great option for displaying your work!  

 

LHN's "Saltbox Village"

I got an urge to clean up my sewing room/stitching room/home office so I spent a lot of the weekend sorting through stuff and reorganizing a bit.  I threw out a few things like too many empty boxes I was keeping and scraps of fabric...it is so hard to use up fabric!  You make quilts and you generate heaps of scraps.... I decided it was time to let some of it go.   I was able to make a little more space and my little world is back in order. 

Heaps of stuff everywhere.......

 

too much stash!

 

 

I see I have some new followers - welcome!  I will try to get out and make sure your blogs are on my very long reading list!

It only took me 5 years....Pride & Prejudice sampler finish! (photo heavy)

I'm happy dancing because I finally finished this project a week ago!!   I started it back in 2008 when Vonna from The Twisted Stitcher started a blog titled "Me Myself & I" for doing 'neighborhood' samplers.  Those were popular at the time with many people doing round robins to build their 'neighborhoods' and the blog was encouragement for people doing one by themselves. I decided to do a Jane Austen "Pride & Prejudice" neighborhood as it's one of my favorite movies.   I pulled patterns from my stash, bought some (mostly from the Stitching Parlor "Pride & Prejudice" series) and started planning my sampler.  At times I got really tired of it and put it away for months at a time.    In January I saw an article online mentioning that 2013 is the 200th anniversary of the Pride & Prejudice novel - I had no idea about that.  It turned out to be a good motivator for me to finally finish this piece up this year so I could put those dates on it.  (If anyone has any questions about the patterns I used, there is a separate page on my blog here that lists them.)

My goal was to make my sampler resemble venues used for the A&E 1995 Pride & Prejudice  mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth - it's my favorite of the many versions made of this wonderful novel.  I searched out the filming sites online and other photos so you can see my inspiration for each part of the sampler.   It was hard to get the colors right in my photos.   I adjusted some of them - the sampler was stitched on cream 36-ct Edinborough linen even though it appears grayish in some photos.  Without further ado....here it is!

First off a photo of the completed sampler:

 

The lovely Bennet sisters on location while filming...Lydia, Lizzy, Jane, Mary & Kitty:

Longbourn, home of the Bennets:

 

Netherfield Hall - the country home Mr. Bingley rents and where he starts his romance with Jane Bennet, and where Lizzy meets Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy:

 

What a military camp back in the Georgian era looked like -

And our P&P British Regiment camped at Meryton...with the infamous Mr. Wickham:

Here we are at Rosings Park where Darcy's aunt and cousin live:

And where the Bennets' cousin Mr. Collins has his parish church with his new wife Charlotte. 

 

Charlotte and her Mr. Collins.   Mr Collins' hobby was bee-keeping. 

We have the incredible Pemberley, ancestral home of the Darcy family.

The House

The Grounds

And finally Mr. Darcy and Lizzy, living happily ever after!

 

I'm so thrilled to get this project off my UFO list!  Thanks for visiting friends and readers!