30 May 2011

Olympia - Stitch Show

April  1993

A visit to my first ever Stitching show at Olympia back in 1993 saw me return home with three new projects to work on.

The first was a Moira Blackburn sampler kit called Time and Season.


I’m ashamed to say that even though I had wanted to stitch a sampler for a long time, the one I brought that day was destined never to be finished, in fact all the threads and chart are still sitting at the bottom of my foot stall where I store a lot of my sewing paraphernalia. I think it was the fabric that came in the kit that put me off because I really loved the muted colours and the design. My fingers were getting quite sore as I stitched because the ‘Rustico’ aida fabric was so course.
Who knows, one day I may go back to it, we shall have to see.

One of the other bits I brought that day was a chart called ‘Voice of the Shepherd’ by a company called Told In A Garden.
On the stand at the show they had stitched it and mounted it an oval wooden frame, which looked amazing but by changing the wording they made it into a Home Sweet Home sampler.

Here’s my finished one.  It's counted Cross Stitch, stitched on evenweave fabric.



Finally the last thing I brought that day was a little kit for stitching a Hardanger square, a technique that I’d not tried before.
I eventually got around to stitching it and then the square sat in my footstool alongside the ‘great unfinished sampler’ because I had no idea what to do with it.



It wasn’t until many years later when my friend Nicki came to visit from Switzerland that she suggested making it into a cushion. I’m useless with a sewing machine, so when she went back home she took it with here and a few weeks later this is what arrived in the post.

My beautiful cushion.


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