First – I just wasn’t loving my Christmas Start project – New Year Sampler. I totally love the chart but I wasn’t loving the floss I picked or the fabric or the fact that the white didn’t show up unless it was stitched with two threads when the rest of the chart was stitched with only one thread. I tried changing some of the stitches that were supposed to be white to light green and that didn’t show up well either. So this is where I left off on it.
I’ve decided this project will be restarted. I love the Owl Forest floss for the Peahen project I got from them and decided I really want to stitch New Year Sampler with their floss. The floss has now been ordered, I’ll pick a different fabric that the white will show up better on and restart it whenever the floss arrives which I’m not expecting until probably February sometime since the shop is closed for the holidays and won’t start shipping again until January 12. But that’s okay – I have lots of other projects to work on and I don’t want to get done with all that stitching and not love the finished project so it’s worth the wait.
As for Peahen – that’s what I picked up after putting away the Sunday Stitches project. When I left off I had started in the middle top border and worked my way over to the left side and had that whole section of border and motifs in the border completed. So last night I stitched the border lines from center to right edge and filled in some of the motifs along the right side and realized as I was working back up towards the corner that my corner was one stitch off on one side. So I spent some time ripping and redoing it.
Then I decided to work on a few motifs and get them started. There are only two floss colors used in that I have stitched in the inner portion so far – I love how the Owl Forest floss has is dyed fading from one color to the next and back – it gives a very unique look to their charts.
As I was emailing Judy about my decision to restart the NY Sampler, I was telling her about the Twin Peak Primitives Exclusive 2021 Mystery Christmas Box I had ordered. One of the kitted projects in that mystery box is a pretty little cardinal chart with all kinds of other fun stuff on it. So, since I seem to be starting all the things the last week or so, I’m going to start that one tonight. I’ll tell you more about the mystery box and show the chart I’m working on once I can get photos during daylight. And speaking of daylight, when I was working from home today, I snapped this photo. The snow we got yesterday pretty much had melted by last night but it started snowing again this morning and has been really fine flakes falling all day but I think it has stopped now.
Justquiltin with Denise Russart 
I love cardinal charts. Can’t wait to see the chart.
Perhaps you could make a few smalls with the sampler stitching you have done already. I am having similar problems with the project I am stitching on. The pattern is shown stitched on a dark orangey rust linen and I chose off-white. I don’t like how mine is looking, too much contrast, I may try tea dying it when I am done.
I could probably make a small out of it but since I don’t like the colors or the fabric they are on I don’t think it’s worth my time to make it into something.
That was a hard decision to make but I fully understand it. Why continue on something that doesn’t make you happy? I love those color changes on Peahen. I have a number of Owl Forest projects and floss for them but always looking for the right fabric. Can’t tell you how many pieces I purchased before I looked at ToDyeFor and Kimberly has been wonderful to work with! I’m looking forward to my next order from her so I can start on one of the projects. Some of the projects are on white or ivory so no issue but it’s the ones on colors that are hard. Looking forward to your new cardinal!
My two orders I placed with ToDyeFor just got shipped today so I have 8 lovely pieces on the way to me so when the Owl Forest floss arrives I’ll have even more choices of fabrics.