Prairie Life Sampler – Plan B

Well I thought I’d be able to stitch the faces that are charted for linen fabric one over one just as normal  cross stitches on aida and then just use small french knots for the eyes.  So I decided to try stitching one in the margin of the fabric to see how it looked because having zombie looking people was not going to do it for me, so the look of them was going to make or break that section of the chart.    Nope – definitely did not look right  – they would be very scary looking bug-eyed people and pretty much just as scary without the eyes.  Hence the need to go to Plan B.

In Plan B, pretty much everything as shown in the chart will be gone.    Ma and Pa and the family are having dinner INSIDE the cabin so they do not appear in that row.   The horses and Jack the dog have been securely locked away in a barn behind the trees to keep them safe from that wandering bear.  But I do like the covered wagon.  So the new plan, which should be easy to execute, will be to evenly space out three horseless covered wagons across that section and hang quits on a line strung  between  the wagons.  I may look in the Brenda Keyes Ultimate Sampler Motif book to see what other motifs might be in there on keeping with the prairie theme but for the moment – wagons and quilts are the plan.

Here’s my start after making a zombie face. LOL  But this photo is actually a good one showing the color of the fabric in natural light (it looks darker indoors).   I did have more of that tree stitched (it’s the tree just to the left of center, right behind the house, but for some reason the strand of floss I was using was looking fuzzy as I stitched like it was worn out, shredding floss so I took it back out and restarted.

That tree is done in Weeks  Sage and it’s one of my favorite light greens.

Prairie Life Sampler Start

Before talking about Prairie Life – I did stick with The Huntsman last night.  Finished the sky and started on the peacock.  I put the finishing touches on the peacock this morning, changing up some of his colors.  The green  and gold were called-for but I thought he needed a bit of blue and the eyes of his feathers I changed to an orange color and a light bluish-green color.

So although I’m going to start a new sampler later today, this one will be set aside but not put away.  I will still work on this one – switching off with Prairie Life Sampler because there isn’t much left to do on this one.  There’s a tree, doodad and year to add next to the peacock and then above that it is basically a reverse image of the family/tree on the other side except it’s a man and dog next to the same style tree and of course the rest of the border.

So the start for later today will be Prairie Life Sampler by Heartstring Samplery.  There’s a lovely story in the chart about how it came about – designed at the time for the designer’s 10-year-old daughter who was obsessed with the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie series of books.   I don’t remember how old I was when I read that entire series one summer but our neighbor’s two daughters, who were quite a bit older than me, had the entire series.  I took care of their dog, Lizzie, when they were gone and they offered that I could borrow the books to read.  So I would read one, take it back and get the next one in the series and was totally enthralled by them.   Of course my favorite book was The Little House In the Big Woods, which this chart appears to depict, because that book was based on life in Wisconsin.  The Ingalls lived about 230 miles north of me in the Pepin, Wisconsin area.

Here’s a close-up of the chart.  I do plan to make some changes.  I will leave off the animals names and I think will leave off all those flowers in the border.   I do like the shape of  “vine” outline of the border so will definitely stitch that but right now the flowers make it a bit too busy for me.  I’ll leave that final decision to the end to decide if I will add the flowers but I’m thinking maybe just making that border outline 2 rows wide or may be three to make it stand out a bit more.  But I’ll stitch in the single line and wait to see what I think when all the rest is done.

Here’s my floss colors – all the called for WDW.  I was going to stitch it on a fabric similar in tone to the chart cover but I think I’ve decided to try it on this  – the color is Revere Pewter – gray with a hint of blue.  It’s a little blown out in this photo – more darker gray – but try as I might I could not get a good photo of it outside today.

It was charted for linen and there is some over one in the chart (which would be fractional stitches on aida which I hate to do) but I think I can modify that.    The faces are over one but I could stitch them in regular stiches for aida and then just use little french knots for the eyes.  There’s a candle in Ma’s hand that’s over one but I think I know how to deal with that, the fiddle has some over one in it – again I think that can be changed and what is stitched inside the embroidery hoop motif is over one but I can change that as well so I think it will all work out.   On my chosen fabric the stiched area will be 11.25 x 11.25 so a nice sort of medium sized project.   A lot of the time I start on the bottom of the chart but I think I’m going to have to start with that woods scene at the top.

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