Frances Eden / Elizabeth Sheffield Progress

Hello to all my fellow stitchers, followers, and friends -- I cannot believe that it has been over a month since my last post. Seems that time has gotten away from me once again.

My goal for April was to start and finish Frances Eden, Unfortunately, I was not able to reach that goal mainly due to business travel and enjoying the great weather that we have been having in North Texas. I have been spending a lot of my spare time working on out flower and herb gardens. I was hoping to get some raised vegetables beds in place this year but looks like that will have to wait until the fall.

I was able to get a lot done though on Frances Eden 1809 from Handwork Samplers.

1809 Frances Eden by Handwork
Worked on 40-ct Examplar Lakeside Linen using HDF silks

I really like the colors in this one but do not like having to do the same motif twice in the same colors. I did get a little bit bored so to shake things up a little bit I picked back up Elizabeth Sheffield from Scarlet Letter around the first of May.

Elizabeth Sheffield 1784 from Scarlet Letter

35-ct Beige Weeks Dye Works using recommended DMC threads

This one is working up really nice. I am doing the x-stitch over one as charted for the alphabet and verse but the rest of the over one I decided to do in tent stitch. I am getting good coverage this way and not nearly as frustrating as having to do it all in over one on 35-ct. The alphabet and verse look better with a complete x-stitch. The one thing that bugs me about this sampler is the line that states the day, month and year that she was born -- July 26 177?. You cannot make out the year.  It is just some strange character/symbol. According to the sampler and the documentation provided by the Scarlet Letter the sampler was completed on 10 October 1784. Since she does not provide her age at the time she completed the sampler it is hard to decifer the character for the year she was born. Any ideas?

A couple of comments left on my last post of Frances Eden wanted to know about the spools of thread and storage that I am using. The fibers are from Hand-Dyed Fibers. They offer their silk threads on mini spools of 150 yards or on micro spools of 52.2 yards in addition to their six-stranded 5-yard skeins. These are great because they are easier to work with, in that you can cut off the length that you need for the area that you are stitiching. For storing these I am using some small clear stackable pill boxes that I found at The Container Store. You can buy these individually or as a stack of 6. I have also found a storage box that is divided and fits the spools really nice so that I can store the color families easily. Makes it easy to organize the spools - for storing and for use stitching. I got this idea from a stitching friend last year when Hand-Dyed fibers started releasing the silk on spools.

One of my local needlework shops had their annual framing sale during January/February and I had two pieces framed.

 Elizabeth Telzer from Threads of Gold

Completed in August 2009 on 40-ct Pearled Barley Lakeside Linen using recommended AVAS threads

 Dorothy Preston from Sampler & Antique Needlework: A Year in Stitches Volume 1

Completed in June 2009 on 40-ct Chantilly Crene Lakeside Linen using AVAS and NPI threads

Thank you as always for stopping by and visiting me and my little blog. Your comments and encouragement mean so much to me.