Needlework Days - July 2012

I have been working hard on my cross stitch this month to have something to share for Needlework Days at Feisty Tapas. Evenings of sport to distract the husband have helped. Now that I am working on the top half of my sampler I am taking a different approach. Previously I would take a strand of one colour and do all the bits that I could find in that colour before moving on to a new one. This was good because it meant that I didn't have any little bits of thread left over, but it wasn't very satisfying and also had the potential to lead to small areas being missed.

My new approach is to take a section at a time and complete if fully. So I present my latest finished segment:

That border may look simple, but looks are deceiving. If you look carefully you may see that although the overall impression is one of symmetry, there are in fact a couple of subtle differences. Whether these are intentional or mistakes in the pattern I'm not sure, but they appear on the offical photograph so I have followed the pattern. I will not say how many times I had to unpick my stitches while working on this border. Luckily, I will have the opportunity to do it all again, as a similar motif is repeated on the other side of the sampler.

UPDATE - I finished the sampler in March 2014! You can see a photograph of the finished sampler here - Moira Blackburn Three Things sampler completed.