New Finishing Skill

Last year, I completed this sampler, shown here freshly ironed and taking up most of the ironing board. The sampler, it's a big 'un - 18" x 30" - and there's a lot of stitching in it. And not just cross stitch. All the grass is long and short satin stitch, the center flower is Turkey work and the vines are crewel, the top and bottom bands are rice stitch, the other dividing bands are various other stitches, and I finished it with an antique hem stitch around the whole magilla. It's on 32 ct Glenshee linen and stitched with Rainbow silks (except for the Turkey work and crewel which were done in wool.)

Since the piece was hemmed, it would have to be sewn to a mat board, instead of stretched, to be framed. I decided to try to tackle this myself and Cathy, the framing artist at the LNS, gave me a quick lesson in sewing on to mat board. A couple of weekends ago I started the (seemingly endless) measuring and pinning (and measuring and pinning) of this booger to the mat. (Note: this makes for some sore thumbs.) This morning, I decided to quit piddling around and finish the job.

It soon became apparent that the most important tool of this job was the handy-dandy paper piercer that I found in the scrapbooking section at JoAnn's. See it? It's at the bottom of the picture, between the pin cushion and the mat board and next to the glaring metal ruler. It made poking all those bleepin' holes a much nicer task than using a pushpin or a T-pin. So, with #22 needle and Gennie Thompson Ivory Linen Thread in one hand and the paper piecer in the other, I commenced to marrying sampler to mat.

Here we see one side (and a bit around the corner) done.

Yippe! Twenty inches down and only 76 to go!







And four hours later...taa-dah!

I meant to take the sampler to the LNS tonight to have Cathy the Great complete the framing, but the sampler failed to make it to the car. Rut-row. So now it will have to wait until Monday. Stay tuned to see the final pictures!