The Finished Sampler

It's been ages since I've posted anything here, I've been posting progress on Instagram, but here is the finished, competition winning piece!!  Thirsk School ran an art competition during lockdown, and I won my age category.  The whole exhibition is here and there are some brilliant pieces in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2uNDHcefaY&t=38s

I'm really happy with the way this piece turned out.  I hated some of the blocks while I was stitching them, but there are some like the eyelets, that I would really like to explore some more.

The whole sampler

It's been a while since I've taken a picture of the sampler as a whole, and it's well on its way now.  I feel like I've been working on it forever, but the blocks are starting to fill up.  I'm starting to get some interesting patterns showing up in the diamond eyelets block, and the checkerboard block has turned out beautifully.  But I think my favourite is the block of a selection of pulled stitches.  It looks like lace.

Four blocks in progress

I'm working on four blocks now.  The checker board and oriental are ongoing and I've started a third block with rows of various stitches and another eyelets block.  I've spent most time on the oriental block.  It's very simple, it's just going to take some time to cover the whole area.  I think I am going to leave that one very traditional, I really like how it looks like woven ribbon. 

Oriental and Checkerboard

I decided that the negative space in the oriental block should be in squares, but it was taking an age to get anywhere, so I decided to make a start on the checkerboard block.  I feel like I should have covered a lot more ground this week given the amount of time I've spent on it, but it takes as long as it takes!

The bigger picture

Tomorrow I start on the second half of the sampler!  It feels like it has taken ages to get to this point, so its quite exciting to move on.

Hemstitch

I've made a start on the hemstitch in the borders.  There is a lot of it, so I thought I would experiment with it.  My worry now is that it might look a bit odd with different borders, but I will try and keep it balanced as I go.  I'm not sure how it will work out, but let's see how it goes!

Almost halfway

The second cloud block is finished now. I need to finish the sky in the first cloud block (still), then hemstitch the borders and this sampler will be at the halfway point.