Now I Know My ABCs…and Os, Us, and Vs

It seems like alphabets have been finding their way to my needle these days. I’ve made a good start on the alphabet part of Stacy Nash’s Summer Garden Roll…


It looks like I need to catch up with the border, and get started on the huge vase of flowers that goes in the middle under the letters.

How could I resist The Drawn Thread Sampler of Stitches?! Of course I couldn’t! Here is A and B all done. And the C section started. Umm, Rachel you are right. I can’t limit myself to 2 letters a month! These motifs are like potato chips!

I like the colors. Ruth asked me to share what I’m using. We agree that while we love The Drawn Thread, sometimes the colors seem sort of dull. It is nice the designs are really well suited to making your own palette. Here is mine:

Dark red: Gloriana Rosewood

Light red: Belle Soie Tulip

Darker purple: Gloriana Grape

Lighter purple: Thread Gatherer African Queen

Darker Green: Gloriana Avonlea Green

Lighter Green: Thread Gatherer Tuscan Olive

Tan (basket): Gloriana Hazelnut

Brown (acorn cap): Belle Soie Harvest

Gold (on the acorn nut): Thread Gatherer Gingersnap

Cream: Soie Perlee 008 (called for)

I have one other gold ready for some other parts of the design later on: Thread Gatherer Burnished Gold (used on the Crown) I believe that there is a stitch later than needs 3-4 colors in the same family so will be adding a color or two for that section. I also need to decide on a metallic which will be used for several couched stitches. Maybe I’ll just go with gold but we’ll see. She calls for Bijoux! But I only have the one spool for the Bargello roll! Anyway, the same colors more or less are used on the whole project. Now that I’m stitching it, I wish I’d gone bolder on the linen choice, not a really variegated linen but something to tone done my colors which are looking quite bold on the cream!) But over all I love stitching with the silks and the rich colors are really pleasing to me.

The Milady’s Needle Stitcher’s Pocket is almost finished. I didn’t realize at first that it only has part of the alphabet on it! That’s strangely unsatisfying but it would spoil the proportions so I’ll accept it. All I need to do is finish the border. Easy Peasy.

I also worked on the ABC Sampler from Jeannette Douglas. I handily finished the first dividing bar and began getting the letters on there. I will make a plan to put on 2-3 letters and 3-4 specialty bands/motifs a month in order to finish it this year.

I have been thinking about how I will approach all these projects this year…there seem to be too many of them but many of you do a good job wrangling many WIPS and I think it’s manageable with a plan. I’ll consider it some more and put forward my ideas later this month.

Housekeeping: There is a new logo for the Smalls SAL now if you like to use it, as well as the dates for each month’s link up. You can find that all here:

14 thoughts on “Now I Know My ABCs…and Os, Us, and Vs

  1. That seems like a good amount of progress in the first week and a bit. You’ve chosen some lovely colours too. Good luck if you try to work out some sort of plan; not an easy task when you’ve got a number you want to stitch on NOW!!

    1. That is FOR SURE. Every day I think, “I want to work on this and this and this and this!” It is lovely to have such a hobby!

  2. You are making great progress on the Drawn Thread piece, I much prefer your color changes!

    1. Thanks!! Me too. To be honest if you look at the charted colors, to me it almost looks like a newspaper so the brighter colors are definitely more fun to use and see.

  3. Gorgeous colour choices for The Drawn Thread, those letters are rather moreish!
    For the project with only half the alphabet, maybe you could stitch it again with the other half!
    Thanks for the new logo, I see you’ve got my GG one updated.

    1. Thanks Jo! Yes, I wish I could get a good picture of what it really looks like because I feel like in person it looks much better than the photo. The same for the Milady’s alphabet. The linen is really green! But it doesn’t look green at all in the picture. I need different or better light maybe.

  4. Lovely stitching to start the new year. You may have seen in my blog that the alphabet and letters are very important to me this year. I love the colours you have chosen.

    1. I scurried right over to read all about it! How fun is that! An alphabet tree! I will try to help you out this time. Thanks for your kind comment!

  5. Such a beautiful variety of projects, Mary! I think the Drawn Thread piece is my favorite. I so love her designs–don’t know why I don’t stitch more of them!

    1. You know, the thing with The Drawn Thread is I don’t think she makes a lot of smalls, so her pieces are a bit more of a commitment. Also because you do have to learn quite a few new stitches to make her samplers and if you just want to stitch, sometimes those specialty stitches come as an interruption. But they really do stitch up quickly! On second thought…she does have some smalls that are freebies on her website though, you may enjoy doing some of those if you haven’t seen them yet! http://www.drawnthread.com/freecharts.html

  6. Wow! Your projects are all so gorgeous. I don’t do a lot of specialty stitches but I love the look of them. It really adds dimension to a project.

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